Openreach’s full fibre footprint has expanded to 11 million homes and businesses, 44% of its 25 million premise target. This represents a 718k passed in the quarter at an average build rate of 55k per week.
Customer demand for Openreach’s fibre services increased with Q1 orders up 34% year-on-year and net adds of 383k. This brings network take-up rate to 32% and total connections to 3.5m. Price rises saw Openreach’s broadband ARPU grew by 10.2% year-on-year.
These same price rises helped BT Group’s revenue grow 4% up to £5.2bn, alongside increased service revenue in consumer.
The retail FTTP base grew year-on-year by 50% to 2.0m of which Consumer represented 1.9m and Business 0.1m.
Conversely, the broadband base was down 126k in Q1. Openreach expects this to continue with a decline of around 400k in FY24.
CEO Philip Jansen said “Consumer is seeing solid pro forma growth driven by pricing and mix, as customers choose higher performance connections; and Business grew its order book, driving revenue growth for the combined unit..”