INDUSTRY News
FTTH Conference 2026: The Show Floor Told the Real Story Greg Kurnikov, founder, Business Invincibility Advisory.
here. The operators I spoke with who were visibly confident shared common traits: they had invested in operational discipline before the numbers forced them to, shifted contractor relationships from volume-driven to outcome-driven, and built management routines that did not depend on a founder knowing every duct route and every crew by name. The ones in difficulty had each arrived there by a different route, but a theme kept surfacing in quieter conversations: the operators in trouble do not always see the full scale of what they are facing. The build is done. Now what? This is not only a UK story. The FTTH Council’s panorama data showed 295 million homes passed across the EU39, but 45% do not subscribe to fibre. Germany added 4.9 million homes passed in the last year, yet take-up sits below 30%. Opinion on the floor pointed to the same barriers: customers on existing broadband do not see a compelling reason to switch, and getting fibre into apartment blocks means securing building-owner permissions that are slow to come when the existing service already works. Over half of German households are in flats. The build is advancing. The customers are not following. In the UK, Openreach reports 38% take- up on its footprint. Altnets average closer to one in five, and Point Topic’s analysis placed most altnet ARPUs between £25 and £35, against a break-even estimate of £40 to £45. Coverage without margin is not a business model. It is a balance sheet waiting for a write-down. Two problems, one question I spent over a decade inside fibre operations, building operational capability
during the growth phase. The lesson that stayed with me: laying fibre is a finite challenge. Running what you have laid is permanent. In the UK, incumbent price hikes are handing fibre operators a window. But pushing ARPU toward break-even only works if the service behind the new price justifies it. Installs delivered right first time. Faults fixed ahead of the SLA. The operational quality that makes a price rise defensible. In Germany, the challenge is different. Customers who are already satisfied with their broadband will not switch for a technology upgrade alone. They need to see tangible value, and they need the switch itself to be painless. An in-and- out installation that does not disrupt their lives, particularly in apartment blocks where tolerance for disruption is low. New technologies will eventually force the transition regardless, but the operators who win these customers now will be the ones who made it easy, not the ones who waited. Whether in the UK or Germany, the problems are different, but the underlying question is the same. The sector applied extraordinary urgency to getting fibre into the ground. The same urgency now belongs to building the businesses that can get it into homes, keep it working, and make it pay. That was the message from the floor, whether the programme said it or not.
Greg Kurnikov is the founder of Business Invincibility Advisory. He has spent over two decades in UK telecoms and national contracting, including more than a decade inside fibre operations, leading teams of more than 1,000 people and managing budgets exceeding £200 million. He now advises fibre operators and infrastructure businesses on the operational transformation required to move from build phase to sustainable, profitable operation. The FTTH Conference programme this year covered resilience, open access, and the path past 90% coverage. Walking the exhibition floor at ExCeL London on 15 April, the conversations carried a different weight. The floor was quieter than previous years. Fewer booths. Thinner foot traffic in the aisles. Vendors I spoke with said the same thing: the year has started slowly. Build volumes and install orders are down. Most assume the market is holding its breath while the sector’s restructuring plays out. What the exhibition floor said Netomnia took the Operator Award. Trevor Linney from Openreach won the Individual Award. Both well earned. At the same time, between the stands, many of the conversations kept circling back to the same place. G.Network out of administration under new ownership. Gigaclear’s lenders taking control after a recapitalisation that wiped out the previous equity. KCOM disclosing a £530 million asset write-down. For the people on the floor, these were not distant headlines. Tolstoy wrote that happy families are all alike and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Something similar applies
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Volume 48 No.2 MAY 2026
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