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National network operator Openreach (BT) has this morning confirmed that their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which offers broadband speeds of up to 1,800Mbps to homes via hundreds of UK ISPs, has now covered 20 million premises (up from 18.3m on 1st May 2025) and take-up has risen to around 38%.

The progress, which comes a day after we revealed that the operator will trial download speeds of up to 8.5Gbps during Q1 2026 (here), won’t come as a huge surprise to ISPreview’s readers because we’ve been reporting Openreach as having reached this figure for the past week or two.

Openreach’s project is claimed to be the “largest and fastest broadband infrastructure build in Europe“, with engineers now reaching more than 1 million new homes every three months (quarter). This includes around 33,000 medical facilities and more than 25,000 colleges, schools and universities etc.

Clive Selley, Openreach’s CEO, said:

“In 2025, being online isn’t a luxury – it’s a lifeline. From booking GP appointments to applying for jobs, accessing education and launching businesses, digital connectivity is the gateway to opportunity. Full fibre makes that gateway faster and far more reliable, and it will keep up with the demands of our digital world. But upgrades don’t often happen automatically, so people need to contact their broadband provider to make the switch.

Reaching 20 million premises is a UK infrastructure success story, and it’s a credit to the investment, hard work and ambition of everyone at Openreach. But the job’s not done yet. And the next premises are some of the very hardest to connect.

To finish the job, we need the right support as an industry, including targeted help for some rural areas, faster planning approvals, better access to multi-dwelling buildings, and a regulatory and policy environment that gives investors’ confidence and allows competition to thrive.”

The last part of Clive’s comment effectively touches on a number of different areas, such as the operator potentially securing a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR) and the government pushing forward with plans for easier access to large residential buildings, as well as flexi-permits and other measures. But the reality is that Openreach are facing a lot of competition from rival networks and thus can’t simply stop their deployment if they don’t get everything their own way.

The new service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs are doing free upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

Openreach currently has 15,000 people focused on their roll-out and the average per premises build cost continues to hover around the £280 mark (roughly £1.2bn or 4.5 million premises per year), but this will rise as the build becomes increasingly rural-focused.

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The latest independent data from Thinkbroadband has today helped us to produce an updated assessment of how big – in terms of network coverage (premises passed) – the top 17 largest Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP networks in the UK have become by September 2025. Once again, we compare this data against official coverage claims.

One of the difficulties with keeping close tabs on the rapid growth of UK full fibre networks is that some operators often make coverage claims that are difficult to independently verify. Similarly, we’ve often found that the official “premises passed” figures put out by some of those providers may not always reflect reality.

For example, in some cases official figures can include partially built areas that aren’t fully live yet and, in other cases, the network may be technically built, but customers in some of the covered areas won’t be able to get it ordered or installed by an ISP (i.e. not yet truly “Ready for Service” – RFS). Similarly, in a smaller number of cases, operators can sometimes make mistakes in their data.

The latest State of Broadband Report (September 2025) from TBB is thus quite useful because we get an up-to-date summary of how much coverage has been independently verified to exist (RFS) across the largest alternative network (altnet) operators in the full fibre space. We can then compare TBB’s data with the official coverage claims from operators.

Naturally, there are some caveats to consider when doing this, which need to be reflected. Firstly, TBB is not perfect, and they do sometimes miss bits and pieces of network coverage (please email them if you spot this). Secondly, conducting independent analysis of network builds like this is slow and laborious work, thus over the years we’ve tended to perceive that TBB’s latest data can be up to 2-3 months behind actual build.

Such a time lag, which will vary between operators, may not seem like much, but it can create large gaps between independent and official figures. Such gaps are most likely to occur during the early ramp-up phase of a new network build, where smaller networks may – over the course of a year – go from having a few tens of thousands of premises passed to hundreds of thousands (very few operators are in that phase today).

Suffice to say, it’s wise not to make the mistake of automatically inferring that a big gap is because an altnet may be overstating their coverage. In addition, we’ve also dated the official claims below as most operators only very occasionally provide an official update on their build progress and some haven’t done one in a long time, which will thus be out of step with TBB’s latest modelling.

Finally, we’ve included TBB’s previous figures from March 2025, which helps to show whether a network operator has slowed its pace of build or even stalled.

Top 17 Largest UK Full Fibre Networks by Coverage – H2 2025

As usual, we aren’t going to micro analyse each operator above and, in any case, most of TBB’s real-world focused estimates of Ready for Service (RFS) coverage are roughly where we’d expect them to be when compared with official claims. But there are a few caveats to point out for certain operators.

Firstly, Virgin Media’s network is currently in the middle of a major upgrade, which is seeing XGS-PON based FTTP being deployed into areas that could previously only access their Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network. Currently, it’s a little bit difficult to accurately track these XGS areas, and thus TBB has only included the figure for their older Radio Frequency Over Glass (RFOG) based FTTP build.

Meanwhile, the nexfibre build is technically a separate company and so gets its own entry, despite only selling packages via Virgin Media and giffgaff. Officially, Virgin Media and nexfibre claim to have passed a total of over 7 million premises with FTTP (as above, the missing gap above reflects Virgin Media’s HFC to XGS upgrades).

Otherwise, G.Network, F&W Networks and Hyperoptic’s official coverage data continues to show some extremely wide gaps from TBB’s real-world analysis. Suffice to say, it’s often wise to take any coverage claims from these operators with a pinch of salt.

Finally, Freedom Fibre is still missing off the table, despite officially claiming to have covered 350,000 premises (Jun 2025); this may be partly due to issues with the network integration of VXFIBER’s base. But TBB currently measures them as 236,000 premises and told us that they’ll probably make the next report in 2026. Other altnets currently remain too small to be included.

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Public service broadcaster Channel 4 has this morning announced the launch of three new streaming channels – 4Reality, 4Homes, and 4Life, which are to made exclusively available via the new broadband-based live TV streaming service – Freely – in the UK.

Freely, which first launched in April 2024 (here), is not currently being pushed as a replacement for the ageing terrestrial Freeview (inc. Freeview Play) and satellite-based Freesat TV platforms and should, at least for now, be seen as more of a complement – a different kind of service that helps to make broadcast TV more accessible. The change is important because the age of traditional terrestrial TV signals, which came via the airwaves, is expected to gradually come to an end as gigabit broadband nears almost universal UK coverage by 2032 (currently c.88%).

The big news today is, as above, that one of Freely’s key backers – Channel 4 – has just become the first public service broadcaster to launch a range of three new streaming channels, which will be exclusively available on Freely.

With the new streams, Freely will offer more than 50 live channels over Wi-Fi and broadband links, alongside “more on-demand shows than any streaming service in the UK” (we haven’t been able to independently verify that claim).

Channel 4’s Exclusive Streaming Channels

➤ 4Reality (channel 67): sometimes risqué, often funny and always entertaining. 4Reality from Channel 4 – the original home of the best reality TV – brings favourites across real-life drama, sass, romance and rivalry from Married at First Sight, Naked Attraction and First Dates to Made in Chelsea.

➤ 4Homes (channel 68): from massive mansions to amazing spaces, from places in the sun and DIY in chateaus, to homes in the best-of-British locations, 4Homes showcases all places great and small spanning shows such as Grand Designs, A Place in the Sun and Location, Location, Location.

➤ 4Life (channel 82): real lives, real people (and real dogs too). And huge helpings of delicious food. Meet people doing amazing things – often in beautiful places. 4Life showcases the great content genres channel 4 viewers love including travel, food and animals, from The Dog House to Travel Man.

More channels are also expected to join the line-up as the platform continues to grow.

Grace Boswood, C4’s Director of Technology & Distribution, said:

“We’re proud to lead the way among Britain’s broadcasters by enhancing Freely’s offering. The launch of our new streamed channels further accelerates our transformation into the streaming age as the world’s first public service streamer. It also continues our record of digital distribution firsts to benefit advertisers and viewers.”

Freely has also been quietly improving their device support and recently confirmed plans to launch on Netgem’s new streaming TV box during Q4 2025 (here); such boxes are typically bundled by broadband ISPs like Brsk, TalkTalk, CommunityFibre, Wightfibre and others. The BBC are also understood to be considering the launch of a streaming box (here).

However, Freely’s adoption is likely to remain limited until the service arrives on popular streaming devices from Amazon, Google and Roku, but at present there’s no clear indication of whether or even when this will happen.

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British-registered mobile operator Vodafone has today published a new white paper with Meta and Google, which shows the benefits of advanced video compression technology, via the AV1 video codec, for Smartphone users on their mobile broadband networks. But it also notes that many people use budget handsets, which often lack full support it.

Just for context. Modern video codecs and compression algorithms tend to get more sophisticated and thus effective over time, partly because they’re also able to take advantage of ever more sophisticated computer processors (CPU). The benefit of this is that you can squeeze more data (i.e. higher quality video streams) into smaller packets (e.g. streaming services often recommend speeds of 20Mbps+ for a 4K video, but some years ago it was more like 50Mbps+).

So not only do advancements in video codecs result in the ability to push higher quality video streams over slower broadband connections, but doing so also means a lower capacity demand for fixed broadband and mobile networks (Content Delivery Networks also have a big role to play by caching content closer to users). This is particularly important when you consider that 70-80% of all mobile data traffic comes from video.

The new white paper helps to illustrate the real-world impact of this. But it also highlights how most mobile phones in use today across Europe are lower tier handsets (priced less than £220), which often lack the necessary codec support – particularly built-in hardware – to decompress such content to deliver a buffer-free video experience. Software decoding (SVT-AV1) is often still possible, but not always, and tends to use more battery power.

“The situation is only marginally better with mid-tier handsets. Low and mid-tier handsets account for around 75% of handset sales globally,” said Vodafone.

The paper notes that there has been increased AV1 adoption at the top of the middle tier price range, both on iOS and Android, through recently released phones such as the iPhone 16e, OnePlus 12R, etc. These phones are generally based around higher end SoCs (computer chips) such as the Apple A18 or Qualcomm Snapdragon 8.

In future, hardware decoder availability within middle tier SoCs, such as the MediaTek Dimensity 6000 and 7000 series, Qualcomm Snapdragon 6, or Samsung Exynos 1500 line, is also expected to be a positive development for the industry. But the paper highlights the importance of ensuring the widest adoption to help bandwidth, boost video quality and keep battery usage down to a minimum.

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The CEO of BT Group, Allison Kirkby, appears to be gearing up for the government’s annual 2025 Budget announcement by complaining that the operator pays “10 times the amount our peers pay in countries like Germany and the Netherlands” on things like business rates, energy levies and other costs associated with regulation and compliance.

In the recent past, BT, particularly it’s Openreach network access division, has tended to focus more of its public commentary on calls for greater support in the roll-out of full fibre broadband across the UK. The most common requirements to emerge from that have tended to reflect a strong desire for the full adoption of flexi-permits to boost street works, faster planning approvals and easier access to run new fibre into large residential buildings (MDUs); not to mention a generally softer regulatory regime via Ofcom’s current Telecoms Market Review (TAR).

However, Kirkby also has wider considerations, not least in terms of the rising cost of doing businesses in the UK, which came to the fore this morning as part of her keynote speech to the Connected Britain conference in London.

BT previously estimated that it would incur a £100m increase in its costs as a result of the last 2024 Budget (mostly due to the rise in National Insurance contributions), and the fear is that this year’s budget could create even bigger challenges.

Allison Kirkby, BT Group CEO, said (FT):

“We pay in business rates, energy levies and other costs associated with regulation and compliance 10 times the amount our peers pay in countries like Germany and the Netherlands … So we’re already at peak government inflicted costs.

We’ve got to make sure that these massive infrastructure groups that will bring billions of pounds to the economy in the coming years … get a return on investment.”

Much of the news media currently still seems to be anticipating more tax rises from the next budget, which is due to be delivered on 26th November 2025. Suffice to say that Kirkby may not get what she wants, particularly while the government are still struggling to find enough money to do everything they desire. But then again, rabbits do sometimes get pulled out of hats on budget day. We’ll find out soon enough.

Kirkby is also an adviser on the government’s Board of Trade.

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Broadband ISP and mobile operator EE (BT) has today announced that they’ll once again be an official partner for the next Call of Duty video game (Black Ops 7), which is currently scheduled for release on 14th November 2025 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows (PC), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Customers of the service can also expect a few perks, like beta access.

The main perk seems to involve granting customers early access to the game’s Open Beta phase. EE has thus launched a new sign-up site, which will allow up to 150,000 people to unlock Early Access to the beta – between 6pm on 2nd October and 6pm on 5th October. Customers can register their details at: https://ee.co.uk/gaming/call-of-duty-black-ops-7-early-access-beta (EE pay monthly mobile customers can also text BLACKOPS7 to 150).

EE are also offering pre-orders of the game and plan to offer a number of initiatives for gamers and customers at launch. The provider was similarly keen to highlight their home connectivity bundle for gamers – Made for Gamers.

The packages include 1.6Gbps broadband speeds (FTTP via Openreach), as well as Game Mode, designed to allow gamers to maximise their in-home WiFi connection. This comes in addition to the Smart Hub Pro router and WiFi Pro extender – offering WiFi 7 capabilities. The package also includes 24-months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Malcolm Cubitt, Director of Mobile Product at EE, said:

“Now in our third year as a proud partner of Call of Duty, we’re thrilled to continue building on the success of our collaboration. This iconic franchise continues to captivate millions, and with excitement building around the latest release, we’re committed to giving gamers across the UK early access and unforgettable experiences. It’s another step forward in our ambition to be the Uk’s no. 1 destination for gaming.”

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At the start of this year Quickline, which is building a rural gigabit broadband network across parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (England), announced that they and the Lincolnshire Institute of Technology (LIoT) would support 500 students through a bursary scheme (i.e. money to help with study, travel and childcare costs). The first 50 students have now benefitted from this.

The bursary was setup to support students from “underrepresented groups“, including mature students, parents, people from low-income families, people with a disability and people who were previously in care. Students who meet these criteria and are enrolled on level 4 and 5 courses will be eligible for the funds.

The bursary support for LIoT forms part of the social value commitment made by Quickline as part of its Project Gigabit contracts. Apparently, each of the first 50 students to benefit from this has received a grant of up to £1,000 for things such as laptops, headphones, desk chairs and cameras, as well as travel expenses and course fees.

Julian Chalk, Head of Engagement and Enablement at Quickline, said:

“It’s great to hear that the bursary has already benefited 50 students who are studying technical subjects across Lincolnshire.

We’re big on accessibility and inclusivity, and it’s a key part of what we do – connecting rural communities that have been left behind by other providers. Now, we’re not only ensuring everyone has access to decent broadband but we’re also ensuring that everyone has access to the education they need to thrive in a STEM career.”

Over the next three years, Quickline’s rollout is aiming to extend gigabit-capable broadband to a further 360,000 premises across thousands of rural communities (roughly 170k via state aid projects and almost 200k from commercial builds). To date, the company has already invested more than £107m into rural areas. But before that, the provider hopes to end 2025 with a total of 200,000 premises passed.

Residential customers reached by their new full fibre network are typically charged from £22 per month on a 24-month term for 100Mbps (50Mbps upload) speeds with free installation, which goes up to £49 for their top 1000Mbps symmetric speed tier (you also get the first 8 months of service for free on their top tier).

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One of the country’s largest alternative broadband networks, Netomnia (Substantial Group), which has now covered 2.8 million UK premises RFS (inc. 400,000 customers) with their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network (up from 2.7m on 1st Sept 2025), have this morning announced a refresh of their brand following the merger with Brsk.

So far as we can tell from the logo on their website today, the refresh appears to be reflected through a fairly subtle change of font and a tweak to the scale, organisation and colour of the circle graphic in front. Otherwise, it doesn’t appear to have gone through a dramatic shift. But as usual with any branding changes these days, the official press release goes rather heavy on the hype.

“This evolution is more than visual. It reflects Netomnia’s progression from challenger to national infrastructure leader. The company’s refreshed positioning emphasises its role as a future-ready fibre network built to enable tomorrow’s innovations, while the visual identity brings this ambition to life. The name itself tells the story – ‘Net’ represents the inclusive network built for everyone, while ‘Omnia’ (Latin for ‘all things’) conveys readiness to power whatever innovations come next,” says the announcement.

In addition, for those who didn’t know what the circle in front of their logo was meant to represent (we assumed some symbolism with fibre optic cabling), Netomnia explains how the refreshed circular abstract element actually “symbolises both ‘the right connection’ and ‘the potential’, forming a complete circle that suggests connectivity and continuous progress“. So, now you know.

Jeremy Chelot, Group CEO of Netomnia, YouFibre and brsk, said:

“This is more than a design change. It’s a signal of the company we’ve become – powerful, ambitious, and building the UK’s third fibre infrastructure. Where the most powerful internet lives is both our idea and our promise.”

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Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today provided more details to ISPreview on their future plans for a trial of full fibre broadband (FTTP) using 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology in early 2026. The trial is planned to reach about 40,000 premises in Guildford and push download speeds from ISPs up to a blistering 8.5Gbps (8,500Mbps).

The operator’s existing FTTP network is currently still largely based off older Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology, which places limitations on how fast they can go before capacity becomes an issue. For example, GPON supports a capacity on each trunk line of up to 2.5Gbps (Gigabits per second) downstream and 1.24Gbps upstream, which needs to be shared between several premises.

As a result, Openreach’s fastest asymmetric consumer broadband product via FTTP currently maxes out at a download speed of 1.8Gbps and uploads of 120Mbps. However, rural areas covered by their government-funded Project Gigabit (Type C) roll-out contracts can separately access symmetric speeds, albeit only up to 1Gbps, and that’s priced more as a premium business product.

The difficulty for Openreach is that many of their rivals have long since deployed XGS-PON technology (the ‘X’ stands for 10, the ‘G’ for Gigabits’ and the ‘S’ for Symmetric speed), which helps them to offer faster broadband speeds and be more competitive on price. Consumers might not strictly need such speeds yet, but marketing departments can still use it as an effective way to differentiate themselves.

Openreach’s Response

The good news is that Openreach haven’t been standing still. The operator’s network is currently adopting a ComboPON approach, which in the future will make it easier for them to upgrade premises to newer fibre technologies without needing to change all the existing optical modems (ONTs) inside homes (e.g. they’d be able to use either GPON or XGS-PON based ONTs, whatever the situation requires).

Back in February 2025 they also revealed a plan to trial XGS-PON sometime in 2026 (here), which a few months later was followed by ISPreview revealing that this would officially support symmetric product speeds of up to 3.3Gbps (here). Shortly after that we also revealed details of the new Optical Network Terminals (ONT) they’d be using to support this service in homes and businesses (here).

Suffice to say that we now know quite a lot about what to expect from Openreach in the future, except for precisely when and where the XGS-PON trial itself will actually take place. But that recently started to change after some of ISPreview sources began sharing new details and the network operator has now kindly confirmed their plan to us.

The initial XGS-PON trial, which will actually go beyond the previously stated symmetric speed of 3.3Gbps and test asymmetric speeds of up to a whopping 8.5Gbps, is due to take place across 40,000 premises in the Guildford area between January and March 2026.

An Openreach spokesperson told ISPreview:

“We recently told customers that we’ll be running a pilot of XGS-PON in the Guildford area, covering around 40,000 premises, and starting between January and March, 2026.

As part of the pilot, we’re exploring the full range of speed capabilities offered by the technology including symmetric 3.3Gbps and asymmetric options up to 8.5Gbps. This will help us understand how best to support future customer demand.

It’s important to say that this is a trial at this stage, so the higher speed tiers shouldn’t be taken as a commitment to launch products.

We’re continuing to assess the nationwide demand for products that this technology might enable.”

As expressed by Openreach, the 8.5Gbps speed mentioned above is initially more about testing the capabilities of their network to handle that performance than launching a commercial product at such speeds. The planned future product speeds in their official documentation currently only go up to 3.3Gbps, which to be fair is absolutely fine – it’s still a very impressive performance level to offer.

The classic problem with packages as fast as this is that most consumers would struggle to harness those top speeds, usually due to WiFi/device limits and any limitations of the online servers you’re connecting with (Why Buying Gigabit Broadband Doesn’t Always Deliver). But if you’re happy to pay for it, why not. The rest of the internet will catch up eventually.

The big caveat here is that we don’t yet know how much Openreach will charge for their faster consumer tiers, although we’ll no doubt get some indication of that once the official trial documents are released in the near future. This is important because, unlike a lot of other networks, Openreach’s FTTP coverage is already huge.

Openreach also has a lot more multi-gigabit capable competition to consider these days (e.g. CityFibre, Netomnia, Virgin Media, CommunityFibre etc.). But their wholesale pricing is still semi-restricted by Ofcom’s regulation. The operator will thus be watching the current Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR) closely in hope of some flexibility (any changes here will be introduced from April 2026).

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Hampshire-based alternative network builder and UK ISP toob, which has deployed a gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of South England and also harnesses CityFibre’s network in other areas, has today announced that they’ve connected their 100,000th customer (up from 90k on 12th June 2025).

The customer figures break down as 60,000 on their own network and more than 40,000 through their wider CityFibre partnership, which shows how much of a dramatic impact the latter agreement has had on their take-up. But that’s not too surprising when you consider that they’re currently only charging from £22 per month for symmetric speeds of 150Mbps and just £25 for 1Gbps on an 18-month term.

Just for context. Toob’s own fibre network can be largely found around the Southampton and Portsmouth areas, and also across the Aldershot, Farnborough, Fleet, Frimley, Blackwater, Yateley and Woking areas. But outside of that, they primarily harness CityFibre’s network to expand their reach. As of September 2025, the provider operates across a combined total of 28 counties and 89 towns and cities throughout England.

We should add that toob does in fact actively continue to expand their own FTTP network too, with recent deployments taking place in locations like the large Hampshire village of Portchester (here). Otherwise, we should add that the provider recently launched its complete Wi-Fi mesh extender system for customers and maintains a commitment to “no in-contract price rises“.

Nick Parbutt, toob CEO and Founder, said:

“Reaching over 100,000 customers is a fantastic achievement for all at toob and this milestone is a direct result of the dedication and hard work of each member of the team. It’s incredibly rewarding to see over 100,000 customers choose toob. We’re grateful for their trust and excited to keep building a future where our ultrafast broadband is affordable and accessible for all.”

The network operator is currently being financed through equity from funds managed and advised by the Amber Infrastructure Group, as well as a large amount of debt financing provided by Ares Management’s Infrastructure Debt (here). At the end of 2023 this mix of equity and debt reflected a total commitment of £395m.