BT has now passed more than 17 million premises in the UK with its fibre network, with more than 2 million homes and businesses now using BT fibre-based services. All of BT's major communications provider (CP) customers are actively marketing and selling fibre, helping Openreach boost fibre-take up to 316,000 net connections in the second-quarter ending 30 September, up 70 percent. BT added 195,000 retail fibre broadband customers in Q2,up 24 percent, to reach a total of around 1.7 million. The UK broadband market grew by 168,000 in the quarter, up 12 percent from a year earlier, with BT accounting for 156,000, up 92 percent. BT Sport now has over 2 million customers, helping to reduce line losses and boost BT's share of the retail broadband market.
Total group revenue was constant a GBP 4.49 billion in the second quarter, with group EBITDA down 4 percent to GBP 1.43 billion, from GBP 1.48 billion a year earlier. BT Global Services posted revenue down 4 percent to GBP 1.69 billion, from GBP 1.76 billion, with EBITDA up 10 percent to GBP 201 million, from GBP 182 million. BT Retail posted revenue up 2 percent to GBP 1.84 billion, from GBP 1.81 billion, with EBITDA down 13 percent to GBP 429 million, from GBP 495 million. BT Wholesale saw revenue rise 1 percent to GBP 624 million, from GBP 616 million, with EBITDA up 11 percent to GBP 159 million, from GBP 143 million. Openreach saw revenue fall to GBP 1.27 billion, from GBP 1.28 billion, with EBITDA down 3 percent to GBP 642 million, from GBP 664 million.
Total order intake for BT Global Services in the second quarter was GBP 1.5 billion, up 19 percent. BT Retail registered consumer line losses of 65,000 in Q1, an improvement of 64 percent on last year and the lowest level for five years, driven by the positive impact of BT Sport. It added 156,000 retail broadband customers to reach a total of around 7 million, and 70,000 TV customers to reach over 900,000. It also now has 5.2 million BT Wi-Fi hotspots with usage more than doubling to 6.6 billion minutes in the quarter.
