BT Group results show full fibre push transformation underway

The latest BT Group results for the three months to the end of June 2025 show some interesting stats, e.g. Openreach FTTP saw 46% net adds of 556,000 compared to the same quarter last year which is a record volume. The interesting thing is that BT Retail (BT, EE, Plusnet) only say its full fibre customer base increase by 32% on a year on year basis. This would suggest that other retailers who use the Openreach full fibre network are performing well and just maybe competition is working.

The quarter saw Openreach pass an additional 1 million premises in the quarter, and is according to the results on track to deliver a total of 5 million premises in the 2025/2026 financial year. At the end of the quarter they had passed over 19 million premises and 5.2 million of these are in rural locations.

All is not perfect at Openreach as the success story is that they saw a record growth in actual FTTP connections with 7.1 million premises connected in total, producing a take-up rate of 37% and APRU rose 4% to £16.60. The flip side is that the number of Openreach broadband lines fell by 169,000 in the quarter attributed to losses to the competition and a weaker broadband market.

“BT has had a solid start to the year, with our full fibre broadband now reaching more than 19 million homes and businesses and our 5G network available to over 87% of the UK population. We’re seeing strong customer demand for our next- generation broadband and mobile connectivity across all our brands, with record Openreach fibre take-up again this quarter. And we’re delivering on our transformation, as we radically simplify our business while improving customer experience.

BT is investing more than anyone else in the nation’s networks, we’re connecting customers faster, and we’re on track to deliver our targets for this year, next year, and the end of the decade – creating a better BT, for all of us.”

Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive, BT Group

The BT Consumer (BT Retail) arm saw its ARPU drop 2% to £41.90, which for customers who’ve seen the annual price rises bite will be something of a surprise. What we suspect is happening is that those impacted by the price rises have reevaluated some of the add-ons and are dropping features to retain just a core service, plus with the Digital Voice rollout millions are probably finally dropping the voice component. The number of broadband customers grew by 11,000 in the quarter, which means the bulk of the BT Retail FTTP growth is from existing customers opting to switch to full fibre, or BT Retail actively switching customers.

In terms of the Openreach FTTP footprint and adding 5 million premises passed in 2025/2026 on 1st April 2025 our footprint tracking was showing 17.7 million premises Ready for Service, on 30th June 2025 this was 18.7 million RFS and as of this morning we are at 19 million. There are around 15,000 premises that are passed but don’t show in our Ready for Service statistics as the major retailers disagree on being able to order, this is likely to be down to timings for cable links being commissioned at the handover exchanges, but could be something more serious in some cases, e.g. Sheringham and Cromer has had two large blocks of premises on this list for a couple of months now.

If Openreach is to deliver 5 million premises in 25/26 it needs to accelerate its build rate and it maybe that the growing list of locations that are built but not Ready for Service may be part of that, i.e. construction and commissioning teams are ramping up build rates, but the exchange and backhaul infrastructure teams still need to up the pace at which they can make areas available to the various wholesale customers.