Research Round-up October 2024
- Veronica Speiser
- Nov 4, 2024
- 11 min read
Global broadband subscribers on the cusp of 1.5bn as fibre, satellite and FWA gain customers: Q2 2024 update; UK gigabit-capable and FTTP broadband availability in Q3 2024; UK telecoms sector news; government and Ofcom updates
Key publication of the month:
This is our regular update on fixed broadband availability in the UK, tracking the progress between the end of June 2024 and the end of September 2024. The analysis is based on the ThinkPoint broadband availability dataset which includes 1.7m postcodes. More granular, postcode level broadband availability updates by ISP and technology, are available to our ThinkPoint customers.
Key headlines
At the end of Q3 2024, the overall FTTP coverage was 23.2m premises (70.5% of the UK total). This metric was up from 67.7% in Q2 2024.
The number of FTTP-enabled premises was up 4.1% q-o-q, with the growth continuing, albeit a bit more slowly than in Q2.
Nearly 8.3 million premises (25% of the UK premises) had access to 2 or more FTTP networks, and 1.1m were covered by 3+ fibre networks.
The FTTP coverage was 50% or higher in 84.5% of local authorities, up from 77.5% of LAs three months earlier. We recorded a number of high growth areas in East Midlands and the East of England.
The largest number of FTTP premises added was in Stoke-on-Trent (+28K), Birmingham (+18K), and King’s Lynn and West Norfolk (+13K).
Stoke-on-Trent also saw the most marked increase in the proportion of premises passed with FTTP – from 42% in Q2 2024 to 64.3% in Q3 2024.
Nationwide 1.7m premises could choose between two or more fibre Altnets. Almost 134K premises were served by 3+ alternative fibre networks.
Fibre Altnets
As an increasing number of Altnets are exceeding 100K fibre premises passed, we are now focusing on this category. At the end of Q3 2024, CityFibre was at the top of the league with 3.4m FTTP premises covered by their network (Ready for Service premises). Vodafone, TalkTalk and Zen remained the largest retail providers using CityFibre’s network, with more than 3m each. This could change, once Sky start selling FTTP over CityFibre’s network, following the recent announcement of their partnership. More broadly, with Sky already using Openreach and OFNL networks, this new deal could see them becoming the largest fibre broadband retailer, ahead of Vodafone.
According to our records, in Q3 2024 Community Fibre passed 1.4m premises, followed by nexfibre with 1.2m, Netomnia with 1.1m[1], Hyperoptic with just over 1m, and brsk with over 0.6m (Figure 3). We recorded the largest quarterly increase in premises passed for nexfibre (+16.3%).
Further consolidation in the market is underway. In June 2024, Netomnia and brsk announced a merger which will have a combined network footprint of 1.8 million premises as things stand, with a target of reaching 3 million premises by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, In March 2024, CityFibre announced its acquisition of Lit Fibre, in what it described as ‘the first of several deals CityFibre expects to close over the next two years’.
(Until the deals are approved and completed, we are still reporting brsk and Lit Fibre as separate entities).
Overbuild by FTTP Altnets has increased further, as multiple network operators are increasingly competing for the same customers. This will put further pressure on take-up rates, profit margins and lead to further consolidation in the market.
In Q3 2024, 86 local authorities had three overlapping fibre Altnets, up from 80 in the previous quarter. Tendring in the East of England and Boston in East Midlands led by the percentage of premises served by three Altnets, with 12.4% and 10.33% respectively. Five out of the top ten LAs in this category were in London and the South East, where higher population density and average household income do play a part. Among all the 86 LAs with three fibre Altnets present, 33 were in these southern regions.
The complete dataset used to produce this analysis is part of our ThinkPoint
service which involves UK Broadband Mapping at postcode level. For more information check our UK Mapping page.
[1] Netomnia are reporting 1.2m. Note: There will generally be a lag to the operator announcements for premises passed at the time since it takes us time to properly track and audit any new deployments, unless the operators tell us about them. Also, we report RFS (ready for service) premises, while some operators and ISPs include premises where customers can pre-order a broadband service.
Key October telecoms sector news
BT Group News
1 October – BT announced it has switched on Global Fabric, its new, transformative, network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform and has been carrying out extensive live testing over the past two months. The first Global Fabric services will launch in early 2025.
Global Fabric will make it easier and quicker for businesses to securely connect employees, customers and devices to apps and digital services — including artificial intelligence (AI) — that are hosted across multiple clouds.
11 October – Openreach name next 79 UK areas for copper to FTTP switch – Tranche 18.
14 October – Openreach announced that the rural village of Llanbrynmair in Powys can lay claim to being the first telephone exchange area in the UK to have 100% full fibre broadband coverage meaning every home and property in the village can now access ultrafast, ultra-reliable broadband.
15 October – Openreach has confirmed the first 1,000 homes and businesses can now connect to its major new ultrafast broadband network for Grangemouth.
23 October – BT Group switched on its first self-powering mobile site, located in the Shropshire Hills, with approximately 70 per cent of its energy needs expected to be generated by the on-site solar panels and wind turbine.
The site was identified through an environmental assessment which calculated its viability for renewable power. Power is generated through a combination of solar and wind energy which is then used to charge the batteries which power the on-site mast.
29 October – October 2024 progress update on BT’s 10 Mbps UK Broadband USO – it has helped to build a USO connection to over 8,248 premises (up from 7,954 in April 2024), with 215 further builds in progress (down from 265).
Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) News
29 October – Virgin Media O2 announced that it has helped thousands of people affected by data poverty get online with free WiFi through its partnership with technology charity, Jangala.
VMO2 and Jangala have reached a milestone of providing more than 1,000 internet-enabling ‘Get Boxes’ to charities and local authorities across the UK. The organisations are committed to rolling out 5,000 Get Boxes by April 2025.
30 October – VMO2 published its Q3 2024 results reporting 5,726,900 fixed broadband customers (up by 16.2k in Q3 vs -12.2k in Q2) and expanded their FTTP network to 281,100 premises – primarily via nexfibre (down from 295k in Q2). VMO2 has also sold a minority 8.3% stake in Cornerstone (worth £186m).
31 October – VMO2 announced that it passed an additional 18,0000 premises in Horsham, West Sussex with its full fibre (FTTP) network build out on behalf of nexfibre. The service offers consumers up to 2 Gbps downlink speeds.
CityFibre (CF) News
11 October – CF published its annual report up to December 2023 with CF seeing a big increase in revenue to £99.67m in 2023 (2022: £30.97m), added 163,000 customers and they had a gross profit of £42.76m (2022: –£20.19m).
However, more funding is needed if CF are to continue their expansion and M&A plans. An extract from the report stated that, ‘As the Group and Company are reliant on securing further external funding which is not guaranteed, a material uncertainty exists which may cast significant doubt on the ability of the Group and Company to continue as a going concern and as a result they may be unable to realise this assets and discharge their liabilities in the normal course of business.’
24 October – CF has begun work to connect up to 150,000 homes and businesses across rural areas of East Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire as part of the government’s Project Gigabit programme.
Works have now begun in East Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, with works in Hertfordshire set to begin in 2025. The rollout was made possible by the award of £58m in Project Gigabit subsidy to CityFibre, which is also contributing its own additional investment to further expand and densify its network.
Independent Operators (Altnets) News
1 October – Lightning Fibre announced the slow down of its network rollout and further job cuts primarily in its internal engineering unit, resulting in around 30 redundancies in the near future.
1 October – brsk launch its symmetrical 2 Gbps BetterNet2000 home broadband service for £55pm on a 24-month contract and £65pm on a month-to-month plan. It also announced that it is expanding its network into further parts of Salford (Greater Manchester) and aims to cover 25,000 premises. Areas to be covered include Blackfriars in the city centre, Seedley, Pendlebury, and Irlams o’ th’ Height. The operator’s network has already passed 250,000 premises across the Greater Manchester area – extending from Rochdale to Stockport, and Ashton in Makerfield to Ashton Under-Lyne. On 8 October, it was announced that a further 11,000 premises will be passed in Colne, Lancashire.
2 October – Zzoomm, which operates across 29 market towns and small urban communities, has seen four key towns reach the notable milestone of 20% market penetration.
Zzoomm is now providing its services to one in five properties in Hereford, Stokesley & Great Ayton and Thirsk. This 20% market penetration has been achieved on network builds which finished only 15 months ago for Hereford, Stokesley and Great Ayton and 25 months for Thirsk respectively.
In mid-September, Zzoomm confirmed that Northallerton had also reached the 20% market penetration milestone.
7 October – According to ISPReview, Netomnia, which is currently merging with Brsk and supported by broadband ISP YouFibre, has given an update to on their plan to deploy ADTRAN’s cutting edge 50G PON kit across their FTTP network. This should start to go live before the end of 2024 and package speeds of 40Gbps will be offered.
10 October – LilaConnect (formerly VX Fiber’s retail ISP arm and is now part of Freedom Fibre following the VX’s acquisition) announced that it had reached 80% FTTP coverage (103,784 premises) in Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire).
14 October – In an interview with Zen’s CEO, Richard Tang, MS3’s CEO, Guy Miller, confirmed that it had begun a trial with KCOM in Hull that will allow MS3 to deploy its FTTP network using KCOM’s existing PIA.
Hull-based MS3 is an Asterion-backed operator that aspires to cover 535,000 UK premises by the end of 2025. To date, they’ve passed 210,000 premises with a customer base of ~15,000, and a big chunk of that is in Hull, where its network cover upwards of 130,000 premises. A further 80,000 are in Scunthorpe, with the rest coming from Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Immingham, and Mexborough.
15 October – Business-focused UK broadband ISP, IT and Cloud solutions provider FluidOne signed a new wholesale agreement with G.Network, which follows similar deals with other ISPs like Spitfire and Cerberus Networks.
15 October – Edinburgh-based Altnet GoFibre (BorderLink) announced it had “completed” its planned FTTP network roll-out to the Borders area, which has covered 25,000 rural premises. This is a big chunk of the 118,000 they already cover across the North of England and Scotland (up from 115k on 28th Aug 2024).
20 & 30 October – Grain Connect announced it is expanding its gigabit-capable full fibre broadband network into Widnes and Warrington, Cheshire with the first customers due to go live in early 2025.
22 October – Lightning Fibre connect first customers in Worthing, East Sussex.
22 October – Grain Connect published its annual report (year ending 31 March 2024) noting that it grew its revenue by 191% to £4.50m (2023: £1.55m), driven by a increase in its customer base in live regions reaching 27,000 up from ~14,000 in May 2023. Its coverage reached 237,000 premises with 204,000 RFS. It reported an operating loss of £15.04m (up from £10.61m the previous year).
24 October – Netomnia has secured an additional £25m loan from the National Wealth Fund (NWF). The investment bolsters a £75m debt commitment made in March 2023 – before the recent transformation of UKIB into the NWF – bringing the total NWF backing to £100m. On 31 October Netomnia published an overview of its Q3 2024 results: it’s footprint reached 1.82 million premises (up 258,000 in the quarter), 190,000 customers (up 40,000 in the quarter), a take-up rate of 10.4%, and QTD revenue was £12.3m.
27 October – Spring Fibre file Notice of Intent to appoint an administrator as its principal backers, Kingsley Capital Partners and telecoms specialist Graphite Strategy have pulled its support.
30 October – nexfibre published its latest quarterly update which outlined its future build locations for the end of 2025 and early 2026 and noted that its footprint has expanded to reach just under 1.6 million premises across the UK, with an aim of passing 2 million by the end of the year.
31 October – AllPoints Fibre Networks (APFN, the UK wholesale division of Fern Trading’s consolidated Altnet ISP networks (Giganet, Jurassic Fibre, and Swish Fibre) acquired Glasgow-based Brillband. Brillband will continue to operate as a standalone entity and brand within the APFN Group, and its team will remain in place. Work will begin immediately so Brillband can serve customers across the country via APFN’s open access wholesale platform. APFN is a national full fibre wholesale platform providing one of the largest offerings of full fibre connectivity in the UK on an open access basis.
Other News
11 October – The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has published an evaluation report into the c.£6.2m “Fibre in Water” trial (Project TAWCO), which tested the deployment of fibre optic cables through a live water mains (used for drinking water) but, ended up being stalled due to several issues. It’s findings can be found in the link above.
16 October – Connecting Cambridgeshire released an update on its Dig Once policy, which was first introduced in 2019 as part of the Connecting Cambridgeshire programme, and integrates fibre ducting into new transport infrastructure projects. To date, over 21km of additional fibre ducting has been installed or is planned across Cambridgeshire by 2025, ensuring gigabit-capable broadband is rolled out quickly and efficiently.
The infrastructure can be accessed, on a commercial basis, via Light Blue Fibre, a Joint Venture (JV) between Cambridgeshire County Council and the University of Cambridge – making it quicker and easier for operators to extend gigabit networks and avoid costly, disruptive retrofitting. Both CityFibre and Gigaclear are harnessing the network to connect hard-to-reach areas, speeding up the deployment of gigabit broadband and benefiting thousands of homes and businesses. Pre-installed fibre ducting has allowed Gigaclear to avoid disruptive engineering works and provide full-fibre broadband to over 2,000 properties in Linton and surrounding communities.
17 October – Starlink hints that 1 Gbps+ downlink speeds are planned for future consumer broadband speed tiers using its global mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
18 October – Government launches British Infrastructure Taskforce; Private finance experts met the Chancellor at No11 Downing Street to boost investment in infrastructure and drive growth nationwide.
20 October – Eutelsat Group announced the successful launch of 20 additional OneWeb satellites, which will increase network strength and redundancy. The launch occurred following the one-year anniversary of the merger between Eutelsat and OneWeb.
20 October – Ofcom confirmed their intention to decommission the old consumer ISP switching system (NoT+) on 24th October this week in favour of their new One Touch Switching (OTS) system, which is said to be “working well“.
25 October – TOTSCo announced that after just six weeks after the launch of One Touch Switch: 100,000 orders have been successfully completed. With 197,000 orders placed, it expects the lag between order and completion to decrease following the decommissioning of NOT+ earlier this week. This achievement highlights industry’s commitment to adoption and the effectiveness of the new switching process.
25 October – The Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which represents thousands of landowners (farmers and businesses) across England and Wales, has joined with over 50 MPs to “seek clarity” from the Government over the future of Project Gigabit broadband funding and what proportion of the spend will be going toward rural vs urban areas.
30 October – The new Labour government published its Autumn Budget 2024 with a commitment to investing over £500m in 2025-26 to deliver Project Gigabit and Shared Rural Network to drive the rollout of digital infrastructure to underserved parts of the UK, including delivering full gigabit broadband coverage by 2030.
31 October – The state-aid supported Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) and Airband have announced that they have agreed to scale back Airband’s contract agreements to deliver full fibre to properties in the region.
Both CDS and Airband remain committed to finding possible alternative delivery solutions for those communities who were due to receive fibre broadband.
CDS contracted with broadband supplier Airband, initially in 2016 to deliver fixed wireless infrastructure and additionally in late 2020 to rollout fibre broadband networks to communities across Devon and Somerset, with four contracts originally due to conclude at the end of 2024.
In total, Airband is contracted to deliver 55,493 premises. To date the operator has delivered 18,794 premises in collaboration with CDS.
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