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1. Concern has mounted about the dire state of the UK’s “altnets,” the companies investing in fiber alternatives to Openreach. In a report issued last month, Neos Networks, an operator of UK wholesale infrastructure, warned that “many altnets are now struggling to generate the revenue needed to ensure longer-term sustainability.” Costly rollouts of full-fiber networks, sometimes by companies with a tiny local footprint, have been largely ignored by consumers. Last year, just 15% of homes passed by altnet infrastructure had subscribed to an altnet service, said Point Topic, an analyst company. Most of that expensively laid fiber was as dormant as a Southampton footballer.

   That rate of 15% is far below the 35% a company must achieve to be commercially viable, according to data from Bain & Company. Nokia, the biggest vendor of fiber equipment outside China, broadly agrees. “There’s no doubt there will be some casualties, particularly at the investor level,” said Lee Myall, the CEO of Neos Networks.
   The market is now arguably overripe for consolidation. At its last count, Neos estimated there were still more than 100 altnets active in the UK, roughly one for every 300,000 homes. This would not be so problematic if there were less duplication, and yet some areas are now served by multiple lines in what the industry refers to as “overbuild.” A merger between unconnected networks covering the same premises would look pointless. The likelihood is that some will simply go out of business.
   Competition from Openreach and BT’s retail arm is the problem many have faced. The incumbent telco has been criticized by rivals like CityFibre, a big, wholesale-only altnet backed by Goldman Sachs, for overbuilding other networks. “Incumbents are overbuilding to save market share,” said Greg Mesch, CityFibre’s CEO, at the Connected Britain event in September last year.

   Yet BT has made no secret of its plans to reach 25 million homes with its full-fiber network by the end of next year. And it can hardly be expected to sit by and let altnets poach Openreach customers still on copper-based broadband networks. Results that BT published on May 22 revealed that Openreach lost as many as 450,000 broadband connections in the six months to March 2025. In the last two years, it has lost more than 1.3 million, about 6% of its entire broadband customer base. Boss Allison Kirkby has admitted to BT’s vulnerability in areas where Openreach has not yet deployed fiber but an altnet has.

   In further bad news for the altnets, BT recently announced plans to speed up rollout with the goal of reaching 23 million homes in total by March 2026. This would mean extending fiber to another 5 million homes over the course of the fiscal year, beating the 4 million that Openreach added to its footprint between April 2023 and March 2024.

   Upselling fiber to a customer on copper is much easier for BT than winning an entirely new fiber customer is for an altnet, according to Jeremy Chelot, the CEO of Netomnia, an altnet that has already participated in consolidation. “It’s a lot easier to migrate from one technology to another than to acquire a new customer,” he told Light Reading last October. This could help to explain why BT can boast a fiber take-up rate of about 36%, more than double that of the average altnet.

   “That challenge of teasing people away from what they’ve always known is a tough one,” said Myall. His company’s survey of 100 senior decision makers at UK altnets found the two main challenges they face in converting subscribers are the existing contracts homes have with incumbents and a lack of customer awareness.

   https://www.lightreading.com/fttx/casualties-of-the-uk-s-big-fiber-push-may-soon-litter-the-market

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