FTTP broadband adoption rates and market value in Europe: latest update; Government interventions and commercial investment propelling UK to 85% nationwide gigabit-capable coverage by 2025; Benchmarking take-up at a granular level; Growth in the broadband market is elusive as challenging economic conditions persist; Global fixed broadband subscribers forecast to grow by 15% to 1.6 billion by 2030; UK telecoms sector news; government and Ofcom updates
Key publication of the month:
In summary:
Total Q4 2023 FTTH/P/B, FTTC, cable, FWA/satellite and DSL wholesale and retail connections remained relatively static during the quarter and stood at an estimated 28.866m from 28.833m q-o-q and down from 28.960m y-o-y.
The fixed broadband retail market slowdown resulted in a 0.11% increase q-o-q with ~33k net broadband subscriber additions.
We estimate that BT’s Consumer division (which includes business) saw an overall loss of ~16k subscribers; compared to Q3 this represented around a 0.15% decrease in the retail segment but saw strong growth in its FTTP base adding 220k FTTP connections to reach 2.3m up 46% y-o-y.
Openreach’s FTTP connections increased by 432k q-o-q and reached 4.303m up from 3.871m; it delivered another record FTTP network rollout of 950k premises passed in the quarter at an average rate of around 73k premises per week with a footprint of 12.802m.
Of the four other major ISPs, Vodafone had the strongest quarter with ~39k broadband net additions, followed by Sky with ~29k, while Virgin Media O2’s (VMO2) performance was less than impressive with ~10k additions. TalkTalk continued to have a turbulent year with ~77k net losses.
Independent (or AltNet) providers also struggled with economic headwinds as they have slowed down their FTTP network rollouts to focus on subscriber take-up, but had a strong final quarter with around ~80k additions up from ~41k net adds in the previous quarter. During the quarter, AltNets consumer broadband base reached an overall estimated 1.937m up from 1.858m in Q3 2023.
VMO2’s broadband customer base increased to 5.717m but its overall in-footprint penetration rate decreased to 33.6%
Sky UK to have added around 29k broadband net adds to close the quarter with 5.748m broadband subscribers. Its pay-TV segment is struggling with the knock-on effects of the cost of living crisis and with an estimated net loss of 30k TV subscribers in the quarter.
Retail FTTP trends
Larger proportions of the Local Authorities (LAs) are seeing an increase in multiple FTTP operator coverage – 117 LAs had three overlapping independent fibre providers, compared to 103 in Q3 2023.
Nationwide more than 2m premises could choose between three independent fibre ISPs at the close of Q4 2023. This figure went up by 147K premises, compared to +180K in Q3 2023; 21% of UK premises did not have access to gigabit-capable broadband (either a DOCSIS 3.1 network or an FTTP network).
Retail and business FTTP connections reached an estimated 5.877m at the end of Q4 2023 (see Figure 1 below).
Read the complete article in our free analysis here.
Key March telecoms sector news
BT Group News
Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) News
CityFibre (CF) News
Independent Operators (AltNets) News
Other News
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