Report: UK broadband market flat
April 2, 2026
The UK broadband market remained relatively flat in Q4 2025, adding 14,000 subscribers to make a total broadband base of 28.96 million connections, according to Point Topic.
Full fibre (FTTP) adoption surged ahead at its fastest rate since nationwide rollouts began, climbin to 81.3 per cent of premises, with multi-network overbuild increasing sharply, and FTTP take-up, while strong, is expected to stabilise over the next year as the early-mover surge eases.
Openreach expanded to 21.4 million premises and added 571k FTTP customers, while BT Consumer delivered another quarter of growth. CityFibre posted a standout 118k net adds as its Sky partnership continued to bear fruit, and Altnets collectively added 250k connections, lifting their FTTP base to 3.55 million. However, with FTTP now mainstream and competition intensifying, Altnet pricing and operational models face increasing pressure, raising questions about how many can remain sustainable as take-up normalises and overlap with larger networks grows.
In summary
-
Total Q4 2025 FTTB/H/P, FTTC, DOCSIS 3.1, DSL, FWA and satellite retail and wholesale connections saw a slight return to growth during the quarter and stood at an estimated 28.96m, up from 28.95 million q-o-q and down from 29.01 million in the previous year.
-
The fixed broadband market saw 13k net additions in Q4, down from around 100k additions in Q3. Q3 tends to be a stronger quarter with students returning to halls, but the lift was short-lived, with the market returning to flat or negative growth in line with the overall trend for 2025.
-
Full fibre connections reached an estimated 12.39 million up 6.5 per cent q-o-q.
-
Openreach continued to see fluctuations in its quarterly line losses with total broadband connections decreasing by 210k in the quarter compared to 242k losses in Q2, noting that it expects full year (end-March 2026) losses coming in at c.850k.
-
Openreach saw 571k full fibre net additions, bringing its FTTP subscriber base to 8.22 million; BT’s Consumer division saw growth again with 8k net broadband additions to reach 8.22 million (excluding its Business segment with an estimated 571k connections).
-
CityFibre closed off the year strongly and reported 118k net additions, bringing its total base to 848k.
-
Independent (or Altnet) providers performed well with 250k net additions from 200k additions in the previous quarter. We estimated Altnets total consumer broadband FTTB/H/P subscriber base reached 3.55 million, up 31.4 per cent year-on-year.
- For the other major ISPs, Vodafone again saw strong gains with 64k broadband net additions; Sky had an estimated 7k additions, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) reported 17k losses, and TalkTalk had another quarter of monumental losses of around 120k connections.
Other posts by :