After announcing a £2 billion funding deal in June, the UK altnet naturally wants to be a consolidator, not consolidated
CityFibre CEO Simon Holden has called for sweeping consolidation across the UK’s altnet sector, warning that without scale the country risks sliding back into a broadband market dominated by BT. Speaking at Connected Britain 2025 in London, Holden used his first keynote as chief executive to urge rival fibre builders, investors and policymakers to act quickly to create a “scaled, open, wholesale challenger” to Openreach.
“Competition in the market is not yet established, and it is not yet sustainable,” Holden told delegates. “Until enough customers have moved to full fibre and are switching freely across networks, we don’t have competition, we just have coverage.”
Holden praised the past five years of investment – over £20 billion of private capital that has pushed full-fibre coverage to nearly 80% of the UK – but warned that BT’s advantages in scale, brand and existing relationships “cast a long shadow”. Without intervention, he said, “BT will reassert the dominance it had in the copper market – over our full fibre future. This cannot be allowed to happen.”
CityFibre, which has raised billions to build the UK’s largest independent fibre network, now counts ISPs representing almost half the broadband market among its wholesale partners. But Holden argued that a fragmented field of “a hundred or so altnet challengers” cannot compete effectively with BT unless they combine forces.
“BT enjoys unparalleled economies of scale, and the most credible strategy to compete is to move beyond fragmentation and combine into a platform greater than the sum of its parts,” he said. “We can create more enduring value by combining now, than by waiting. If we can come together, we will soon build a business which scales across more than half of the UK – potentially bigger than Virgin Media.”
Holden urged government to treat infrastructure competition as economic policy, Ofcom to “stand firm” on take-up and switching, and investors to “back long-term value in scaled challengers”. Altnet founders, he said, should see consolidation as “an opportunity to realise the value of your network” while unleashing retail brands over a national wholesale footprint.
He stressed that timing was critical. “Markets reward clarity and speed,” he warned. “The next five to ten years will shape the UK’s digital future. Either sustainable infrastructure competition takes root, or we slide back towards single-provider dominance.”
“Infrastructure competition is a national imperative,” Holden concluded. “It raises standards. It lowers prices. It creates jobs, fuels innovation and drives growth…The door is open – but it will not stay open forever.”
Under pressure
CityFibre still plans to extend its full-fibre (FTTP/XGS-PON) network to as many as 8 million UK premises, covering around 30% of the country, but the operator has acknowledged it will miss its original end-2025 deadline for that goal. Instead, it is shifting its emphasis away from pure network build and towards growth through mergers and acquisitions, as seen by recent deals to acquire Connexin and Lit Fibre.
Like many altnets, CityFibre faces mounting build pressures which has already slowed some commercial deployments across the sector. Adding to the challenge is that one of its largest ISP partners, TalkTalk, is grappling with its own financial difficulties, a situation that could create wider risks for the operator’s long-term growth strategy.
