New research from telecoms analyst firm Point Topic has forecast that full fibre (FTTP) broadband subscribers in the 31 markets of Europe will reach 157.4 million by 2030 (up from 112.4m at the end of 2025), which reflects a 40.1% growth rate over five years (7% CARG). But the United Kingdom looks set to become one of the continent’s strongest markets, despite its late start to building at scale.

According to the study, France will remain the largest single market (31.7 million subscribers by 2030), but the UK is forecast to overtake Spain as the second-largest market in 2028, and to add more net subscribers than any other country over 2025–2030 (+10.9 million).

NOTE: Project Gigabit in the UK aims to help extend gigabit broadband (1000Mbps+) ISP networks to “nationwide” coverage (c.99% of UK premises) by 2032, focusing mostly on the final 10-20% in hard-to-reach areas. Some 91% of premises can already access such a network (here) and Ofcom are forecasting this could reach up to 95% by January 2029 (here).

The rapid rate of subscriber growth reflects the fact that the UK is still playing catch-up on its roll-out of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure, which in some cases didn’t start at scale until nearly a decade after some of the most mature markets in Europe. The flip side of this is that those mature markets have largely plateaued with their subscriber growth, while the UK still has a lot of headroom to expand.

For example, the slowest FTTP subscriber growth (CAGR) is forecast for Iceland (+1.0%), Spain (+1.6%), Slovakia (+1.8%) and Romania (+2.0%) — markets already close to full coverage and high take-up. As one of Europe’s largest five major markets, it makes sense that the UK will eventually grow to be among the front-runners.

Otherwise, FTTP network coverage (homes passed as a share of households) across the 31 countries will increase from 76% in 2025 to 90.7% by 2030. The least-covered markets by 2030 will remain the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Belgium.