- New Street Research predicts a 250K drop in U.K. fixed broadband subs as wireless competition and mobile-only users increase
- Data shows the country’s broadband market has hit its saturation point
- There’s almost too much fiber to go around
Fiber broadband is all the rage in the U.S., but across the pond the situation is far more crowded and complicated.
According to New Street Research, U.K. physical wireline broadband subscribers will likely decline by around 250,000 in 2025, despite ongoing housing growth and fiber builds. This would mark “the first time there has ever been a decline” in the country’s fixed broadband market.
Competition from fixed wireless access (FWA) and satellite services plays a part, but the firm also thinks some households are foregoing a dedicated broadband service in favor of mobile tethering, which is sharing a phone’s cellular data connection with other devices.
“We understand that this is increasingly common in short-term households (e.g. university students), but this is extremely difficult to track with any detail,” New Street wrote in a September report.
It makes sense when thinking about shifting consumer habits, particularly among the younger population. U.K. research group Rethink has predicted that in the next 10 years many young people will have never subscribed to a fixed broadband line, and they’ll rely solely on their phone or Wi-Fi hotspots for all their internet needs.
As for the U.K. broadband market itself, there are fewer new lines to go around. Data from Point Topic shows fixed operators shed a net 14,000 broadband subscribers in Q2 2025, a slight improvement to the 88,000 net losses in Q1 but nonetheless an indicator that “the market has firmly reached the saturation point.”
The U.K.'s fiber overflow
BT’s Openreach and Virgin Media O2 are the biggest U.K. broadband providers, but there’s a sizable cohort of “AltNets” (alternative providers) building out their own networks, most of which are fiber. Notable AltNets include CityFibre, Community Fibre, Hyperoptic and Netomnia.
These providers ramped their fiber rollouts in recent years, fueled by the government’s Project Gigabit initiative, which is similar to the U.S. Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.
“Unfortunately, [the AltNets] were almost too enthusiastic and overbuilt each other,” said Linda Hardesty, chief analyst of Communications Technologies for Fierce Network Research. “And now many of them are struggling as they try to transition from building to operating. It’s safe to say there’s a lot of positioning about who’s going to emerge as the aggregator operators.”
Unlike the U.S., where operators are still working on building fiber to underserved locations, most of the U.K. population already has fiber broadband access. New Street Research estimates U.K. fiber networks will cover 86% of premises by the end of 2025, with Openreach making up about 67% of that total, followed by Virgin Media O2 (16%), while AltNets are poised to collectively cover 45% of locations.
What’s also different from the U.S. is that incumbent Openreach is required to build open access networks that can be wholesaled to other operators - an approach Canada is taking as well. Open access in the U.S. has picked up steam in recent years due to the likes of Utopia Fiber, SiFi Networks and Tillman, but it’s nowhere near as ubiquitous as in the U.K.
In addition to Openreach, Hardesty noted VirginMedia and even some AltNets have open access networks of their own. All told, there’s “almost too much fiber broadband competition in the U.K. — in terms of all the providers being able to survive.”
“Piling on to the problem, take-up rates for fiber broadband have been slower than hoped,” she added. Indeed, Point Topic found only 35% of U.K. fixed broadband customers are on a fiber-to-the-prem service, compared to 72% globally.