How much money BT makes from every broadband line in the UK in 2026
Key Points
- Openreach earns £17.70 a month per broadband line, up 7% year on year
- BT Consumer broadband customers pay £40.90 a month on average, down 2% on falling voice usage
- Openreach lost 192,000 lines in the quarter but grew revenue as remaining lines pay more
- Record 574,000 fibre net adds took the Openreach take-up rate to 40%
- Fibre now serves 54% of BT's Consumer broadband base
BT now earns £17.70 a month from every broadband line on its Openreach network, up 7% in a year, even as it sheds hundreds of thousands of lines.
The figures come from BT’s first quarter results for the three months to 30 June 2026, published on Thursday (23 July).
Openreach, BT’s wholesale network arm, sells access to more than 700 communications providers including Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and BT’s own retail brands. Its broadband average revenue per user rose 7% year on year to £17.70, driven by higher full fibre take-up, customers choosing faster speeds, and price increases.
That growth came despite Openreach losing 192,000 broadband lines in the quarter as rival networks compete for customers.
BT expects to lose around 800,000 lines over the full year, yet Openreach still grew adjusted revenue 1% to £1.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA 2% to £1.1 billion. Each remaining line simply pays more.
What BT’s own customers pay
BT’s Consumer division, which sells directly to households through the EE and BT brands, generated broadband average revenue per user of £40.90 a month in the quarter.
That figure fell 2% year on year, primarily because customers are dropping traditional voice services in the final year of the legacy landline network. Postpaid mobile customers paid an average of £19.70 a month, up 2%.
The gap between the £17.70 wholesale figure and the £40.90 retail figure covers everything BT’s Consumer arm layers on top of raw network access, which includes things like its own costs, voice, content, customer service and margin.
Fibre is responsible for the rising wholesale number. Openreach added a record 574,000 fibre connections in the quarter, taking total connected premises to 9.4 million and its take-up rate to 40% of the 23.4 million premises its full fibre network passes.
Fibre customers typically take faster, more expensive packages, which lifts the average across the base.
BT’s retail operation is riding the same wave. Its fibre base grew 1.1 million over the year to 4.8 million, with fibre now serving 54% of its Consumer broadband customers. Consumer added 1,000 broadband customers, 13,000 postpaid mobile customers and 9,000 TV customers in the quarter, with churn stable at 1.1% in broadband and 1.0% in mobile.
Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive of BT Group, said record full fibre connections and take-up resulted in fibre contributing more than half of broadband revenues for the first time.
