Research Round-up July 2025
- Veronica Speiser
- Aug 1
- 8 min read
Key publication of the month: Global Broadband Subscribers in Q1 2025
Key points:
In terms of growth, India remained at the top of the largest 20 fixed broadband markets with a 4.7% quarterly growth rate.
The share of FTTH/B in the total fixed broadband subscriptions increased further and stood at 72.34%. Broadband connections based on other technologies saw their market shares shrink again, with an exception of satellite and fixed wireless access (FWA).
Year-on-year, FTTH/B connections grew by 7.5%. Satellite and FWA saw an even higher annual growth (47.4% and 29.9% respectively). Satellite broadband growth was mainly driven by Starlink, although it was significantly slower than in Q4 2024.
Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) adoption accelerates, notably in the US and India, driven by aggressive investments from Reliance, Bharti, T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T, and reshaping market dynamics, especially in rural areas.
Industry consolidation is gaining momentum with potential major deals, such as Charter’s merger with Cox in the US and potential SFR’s asset carve-up among French telecom giants Orange, Bouygues, and Iliad.
South and East Asia continues to claim the largest share of global fixed broadband subscribers, having increased it slightly in Q1 2025 to 50.8%. As the quarterly growth in China, the largest market of the region[1], was double of that in Q4 2024 (1.23% compared to 0.6%), the region’s share of fixed broadband subscriber net adds shot up from 50.4% in the previous quarter to 62.6% in Q1 2025 (Table 1 and Figure 2).
Other regions saw their net adds shares decline, with an exception of Asia-Pacific and Western Europe. The large markets of Indonesia and the Philippines recorded healthy growth rates in the former, while Italy saw a recovery from the previous quarter’s slump and Spain more than doubled its quarterly growth in the latter. North America saw a particularly large drop in the net adds share (4.4% this quarter compared to 11% in Q4 2024), as we recorded a much slower growth in the US, with satellite broadband subscriber rise much more modest compared to the last three months of 2024. In Canada, the growth was much slower due to the removal of 80K subscribers from their books by Bell.
[1] Although we use them in our reports, we cannot vouch for the country’s officially reported broadband subscriber figures which suggest household penetration well over 100%.
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Key July telecoms sector news
BT Group News
1 July – Openreach announced it has added a further 21 locations to its FTTP rollout – as part of a plan to reach up to 5m more homes and businesses during the year to March 2026.
The new locations will cover as many as 80,000 rural and urban premises across the country including; Belmont, in Lancashire; Cheriton Bishop, in Devon; Didcot, in Oxfordshire; Innsworth, in Gloucestershire; Silverdale, in Lancashire; and Woburn Sands, in Buckinghamshire.
22 July – BT announced by the end of August, EE’s 5G standalone network will be available to more than half of the UK population, including major cities, tourist hotspots and major sport and entertainment venues – which would make it the UK’s biggest 5G standalone network less than a year on from launch. EE’s ambition is to make 5G standalone available to more than 41m people by spring 2026.
24 July – BT announced that after nine years as Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Simon Lowth plans to retire from the business. As part of an orderly succession plan and following a comprehensive global search, BT has appointed Patricia Cobian to succeed him.
24 July – BT Group published its trading update for the three months to 30 June 2025. Key operational highlights included:
Openreach’s FTTP footprint reached more than 19m premises, of which 5.2m in rural locations
Record customer demand for Openreach FTTP with net adds up 46% year-on-year to 566k; total premises connected 7.1m, increasing our market-leading take up rate to 37%; Hyperoptic has entered into a wholesale agreement with Openreach, further extending its national footprint; Openreach broadband ARPU up 4% to £16.6, driven by higher FTTP take-up, speed mix and price increases
Openreach broadband lines fell by 169k, driven by losses to competitors and a weaker broadband market; our full year expectation remains unchanged from that given in May
Retail FTTP base grew by 32% year-on-year to 3.7m of which Consumer 3.4m and Business 0.3m; 5G base reached 13.5m, up 12% year-on-year
25 July – Openreach announced a further 137 new stop sell exchange locations, covering a massive 854,000 premises across the UK. By August 19, stop sell rules will have been activated in 1041 exchanges across the UK – meaning 8.9m premises will be under active Stop Sell – equal to 46.4% of Openreach’s total full fibre footprint.
Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) News
2 July – Virgin Media O2 issued a 3G switch off reminder to residents in Norwich, Telford, Guildford and Torquay. The withdrawal of 3G services, which will be completed by the end of 2025, is part of long-term plans to deliver faster and more reliable 4G and 5G connectivity for customers.
16 July – O2 announced a significant upgrade to its mobile network in Coventry, after completing work to boost signal and services in over 2,000 postcodes in the last 12 months.
17 July – VMO2 delivered free Internet to over 1,000 residents in Newcastle Housing Plus Schemes. Virgin Media O2 engineers volunteered to install 30 Jangala GetBoxes – portable Wi-Fi devices with pre-installed O2 SIM cards – in communal areas across Newcastle City Council’s Housing Plus schemes.
23 July – Trustly, the global leader in Pay by Bank, announced a new partnership with VMO2 to provide next-generation direct debit account automation and one-off Pay by Bank payments for VMO2 customers in its digital estate.
28 July – VMO2 created and launched its own AI tool, Lumi AI, that helps agents by analysing conversations in real-time and providing helpful prompts based on millions of previous conversations on the same topic. Currently being piloted among a cohort of VMO2 agents across care, telesales and retentions, Lumi AI will be rolled out more widely over the coming weeks and months, including in the new 500-strong team recently launched in Manchester to resolve the most complex and sensitive customer issues.
29 July – O2 announced a significant upgrade to its mobile network in Dundee, after completing work to boost signal and services in over 700 postcodes in the last 12 months.
CityFibre (CF) News
3 July – CF announced it has connected its first customers in Buckinghamshire as part of its Project Gigabit rollout across the area.
The build in Buckinghamshire is part of a larger Project Gigabit contract that will also provide better broadband to Hertfordshire and East Berkshire, where residents will be able to connect later in the year as build continues. The rollout was made possible thanks to over £58m in government funding enabling more than 34,000 homes and businesses across Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and East Berkshire to unlock superfast and ultra-reliable full fibre broadband. CityFibre is also contributing its own investment to support the project.
9 July – CF announced that Sky Broadband now has the UK’s fastest broadband speeds from any major provider with the launch of its new Full Fibre 2.5 Gigafast+ and Full Fibre 5 Gigafast+ packages.
The 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps speeds will be delivered by the new Gigafast+ hub, Sky’s most advanced yet. It leverages WiFi 7 technology which is capable of delivering speeds twice as fast as WiFi 6. So, whether powering remote working, 4K streaming, or gaming, Sky Broadband customers will get next-level performance, fit for the demands of a modern home.
The launch marks a major milestone in Sky’s full fibre journey and is powered by its new long-term partnership with CityFibre, announced in 2024. The partnership combines CityFibre’s growing full fibre network of 4.5m premises with Sky’s expertise in broadband to accelerate full fibre connectivity to more homes across the UK, including in hard-to-reach areas.
14 July – CF announced it reached an agreement with its shareholders and existing lenders on a major £2.3bn financing round, accelerating its next phase of growth.
The financing includes £500m in new equity secured from CityFibre shareholders, Infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Antin Infrastructure Partners, Mubadala Investment Company and Interogo Holding, underscoring their continued commitment to CityFibre’s long-term strategy and the company’s role in providing critical digital infrastructure across the UK.
CityFibre has also agreed a committed £960m expansion of its existing debt facilities, supported by lenders including ABN AMRO, BBVA, Crédit Agricole CIB, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo IMI CIB, Lloyds, the National Wealth Fund, NatWest, SEB and Société Générale. The facility will support CityFibre’s continued network investment and enable it to rapidly connect hundreds of thousands of new customers across its nationwide network.
An accordion facility of £800m is also being made available to help drive CityFibre’s continued expansion through the acquisition of full fibre network assets. This facility will be used to finance the company’s M&A pipeline and cement its position as the sector consolidator.
30 July – CF announced it has completed the primary-build of its full fibre network in Wolverhampton. The new network is now 'ready for service’ to over 100k premises, more than 90% of Wolverhampton’s homes and most businesses.
Independent Operators (Altnets) News
1 July – Gigaclear announced another round of redundancies mostly in its engineering division as it “re-focus[es] on ultra-rural areas“ or its Project Gigabit rollout areas.
3 July – KCOM published its prices for its Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) products due to come into effect 1 August 2025.
9 July – Wildanet is celebrating a double-milestone in its £77 million rollout of gigabit-capable Full Fibre broadband in rural Cornwall as part of Project Gigabit, the government-funded programme to enable hard-to-reach communities to access fast, reliable broadband.
A total of 10,000 premises have now been connected in the first two phases of the project, transforming connectivity for homes and businesses in towns and villages across South West and Central Cornwall. Wildanet is also marking the start of the third major phase of work, with the installation of high-tech infrastructure now under way in East Cornwall.
15 July – GoFibre awarded the £105m Project Gigabit contract for North East Scotland, covering 63k premises.
16 July – ISPReview reported that significant job cuts set to strike workers at UK ISP Cuckoo.
18 July – ISPReview reported that Truespeed and County Broadband have ‘agreed in principle’ to merge operations in order to create a single operator covering 177k premises (RFS) and 40k customers.
23 July – Netomnia published its Q2 2025 results, and added 243k premises serviceable during the quarter to 2.56m in total and added 54k connections to reach a total of 341k.
Other News
7 July – TOTSCo start onboarding UK ISPs for Business Broadband Switching.
8 July – Telecoms customers (residential and small business consumers) will be able to escalate their unresolved complaints to an independent dispute resolution scheme sooner, under strengthened Ofcom rules.
16 July – Government set six standards to tackle digital divide in UK schools.
17 July – Ofcom published its new ‘Mobile Matters’ research report puts people’s experiences of using mobile networks across the UK under the microscope, based on crowdsourced data collected between October 2024 and March 2025 by Opensignal.
19 July – The TalkTalk Group has confirmed to ISPreview that a further batch of their UK customers are being migrated to Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus) as part of a recently agreed partnership.
21 July – Government prepare new statement of strategic priorities for UK broadband and mobile.
29 July – DSIT announced local leaders in every UK nation backed by £30m each to drive transformative innovation and grow the economy.
29 July – £18m in refunds and credits for BT customers following Ofcom enforcement. BT broke Ofcom’s consumer protection rules designed to ensure telecoms customers get clear, comparable information about the services they are considering buying.
Following engagement with Ofcom, BT contacted the majority of affected customers, explaining that it had not provided them with the information to which they were entitled, and giving them the opportunity to request the information and/or cancel their contract without charge.
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