Top 30 UK Full Fibre Providers by Share of New Build Homes – 2022-23

We’ve today published our second annual summary of the top broadband network operators with the greatest share of the new build homes market, which specifically reflects those that are catering for such developments by deploying Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology. This update adds a comparison with last year’s data.

At present, around 98% of new build homes are already being built with support for full fibre (FTTP) infrastructure (here), which is up from 93% when we first conducted this report last year (here) and over 60% in 2017 (here). Just for comparison, more than 45% of all premises across the UK (new builds and existing properties) can also access a full fibre network (Jan 2023 data).

Last year we did something a bit different and – thanks to information provided via Thinkbroadband’s database – attempted to answer the question of which full fibre operators held the greatest market share of the new build homes sector. In order to do this, we opted to focus on new build homes that were built between January 2018 and April 2022, which reflected the period when full fibre started to become the primary focus for UK operators.

This year’s update takes a similar approach, although this time around we’re also going to look at how many new build homes have been built with FTTP support just in the past year (data from Feb 2022 to Oct 2022). We will then compare that with last year’s wider data sample to see how the situation has changed.

In addition, we’ve included an entry for Virgin Media’s Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network for context (this technology also provides gigabit download speeds). We should add that the Government of England already mandates gigabit-capable broadband for almost all new build homes (here), with a few exceptions, and Wales is due to follow (here).

Top 30 Full Fibre Operators for New Build Homes

As before, there are some other caveats with this data. For example, some very recent builds may be too new to have been spotted. This is because it takes a lot of time and effort to identify everything, thus the latest data may sometimes lag a few months behind the reality. In addition, some tiny or individual developments may also be missed (e.g. personal projects or property conversions) and the availability of new postcode data can cause a further lag.

On top of that, Thinkbroadband will only identify live services (i.e. completed builds where consumers can get connected to FTTP via an ISP), but otherwise the table below should, broadly, provide a reasonable reflection of the market. But if any operators want to ensure that all of their new build home sites are being included, then please contact Andrew at Thinkbroadband to help fill in any blanks.

The Top 30 Full Fibre Operators for New Build Homes

Overall, it’s no huge surprise to find that Openreach continue to dominate the table, while Hyperoptic and Virgin Media’s legacy cable network follow some way behind. But Virgin Media would be in a stronger second place if this list only looked at gigabit-capable coverage, rather than just full fibre.

We should also add that Virgin Media now has an expanded network partnership with Open Fibre Networks Limited (here), which isn’t reflected in the data above. But this does mean that consumers can often take Virgin’s broadband service on many of OFNLs new and existing sites too.

Now let’s take a look at how things have changed if we only examine the most recent data (we’ve excluded operators with under 50 premises added in this period).

Top 14 Full Fibre Operators for New Build Homes (2022-23)

Once again, Openreach is naturally top of the table, and they’re again being followed by Hyperoptic, which isn’t too surprising as Hyperoptic ramped-up their deployment a fair bit during 2022. But we were surprised to see OFNL and FibreNest taking the lead over Virgin Media. On the other hand, Virgin Media’s Project Lightning build is now winding down in favour of their XGS-PON upgrades and a new joint venture fibre rollout.

The fact that Virgin Media’s HFC network is also still dominating their FTTP is another surprise, but this could be because new build home sites take years to complete (i.e. older expansion contracts could be tied to their older tech). But otherwise, there’s very little presence from any other network operators, even new but larger entrants like CityFibre, which don’t seem to be as focused on new builds as others.