march april | Seite 12

“ As Europe approaches high levels of coverage, the focus of the industry is naturally shifting.” – Vincent Garnier, FTTH Council Europe
The UK joins Belgium( 58) and Italy( 57) in the lowest-performing group – markets where fibre availability is growing, but commercial performance is failing to keep pace.
Christophe Firth, Partner at Kearney, commented:“ There’ s no shortage of fibre in the ground, but the returns for providers aren’ t adding up. In some countries, operators have passed 90 per cent of homes but connected fewer than 40 per cent – that’ s a massive commercial gap that needs to be addressed.
The challenge now is converting homes passed into paying customers, improving service experiences, and rethinking how operators go to market. Instead of chasing rollout targets, operators need to focus on actually getting more consumers to sign up to the service. That means improving how they cross-sell fixed and mobile, creating bundles that genuinely appeal to households, making digital sign-up simpler, and targeting the right customers with the right offers. The infrastructure is already there, now it’ s about turning it into a consistent revenue stream.” PANORAMA. Ahead of FTTH Conference in London in April 2026, the FTTH Council Europe released the latest edition of the European FTTH / B Market Panorama, produced by iDate, providing a comprehensive update on fibre to the home deployment and adoption across Europe. The report, based on data collected up to September 2025, highlights continued growth in fibre rollout and adoption across the region while signalling a gradual transition toward a more mature phase of market development.
According to the new figures, FTTH / B networks now pass approximately 295m homes across the EU39, representing around 79 % household coverage. This marks an increase of roughly 23 million additional premises passed in the past year, confirming that fibre deployment continues to expand across Europe, although the pace of rollout is gradually moderating as several markets approach advanced stages of coverage. At the same time, fibre adoption
UK broadband market flat
The UK broadband market remained relatively flat in Q4 2025, adding 14,000 subscribers to make a total broadband base of 28.96m connections, according to Point Topic.
Full fibre( FTTP) adoption surged ahead at its fastest rate since nationwide rollouts began, climbin to 81.3 % of premises, with multi-network overbuild increasing sharply, and FTTP take-up, while strong, is expected to stabilise over the next year as the earlymover surge eases.
Openreach expanded to 21.4 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 3.55m. 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 12.39m, up 6.5 % 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 8.22m; 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. Point Topic estTopics Altnets total consumer broadband FTTB / H / P subscriber base reached 3.55m, up 31.4 % year-on-year.
12 EUROMEDIA