The most significant structural story in UK broadband over the past two years has been the consolidation of the alternative network sector. Several altnets that were raising capital and building networks through 2021 and 2022 have since been acquired, restructured, or wound down. The operators that remain are operating in a market with fewer competitors in some geographies, a more cautious investment community, and a clearer picture of what build economics actually look like in practice.

Expect this to be a background theme running through multiple sessions, even when the stated topic is something else. Questions about how to attract growth capital, how to demonstrate a credible path to return on infrastructure investment, and how to position for further consolidation — whether as an acquirer or an acquisition target — will be present in the corridor conversations if not always in the formal presentations.

For ISPs that have navigated the consolidation period well, there is a real opportunity to tell that story at Connected North — both to potential customers who have been left by operators that exited markets, and to investors who are looking for operators with proven execution capability.

Project Gigabit, the UK government’s programme to fund gigabit-capable broadband in areas not covered by commercial rollout, is into its middle phase of delivery. Some contracts are progressing ahead of schedule; others have faced challenges. The programme’s overall trajectory and the government’s appetite for the next round of procurement are questions that directly affect ISPs with exposure to publicly funded deployment.

Alongside Project Gigabit, the Building Digital UK team has been working on the Shared Rural Network programme and various voucher schemes. The policy picture is not simple, and there are legitimate questions about whether the current programme design is producing the coverage outcomes the government targeted. Connected North typically has sessions that engage with this directly, with contributions from BDUK, operators, and industry bodies.

For smaller regional ISPs that depend on publicly funded contracts for a portion of their revenue, understanding the direction of future procurement rounds is a planning priority. This is the conference where those signals tend to emerge.

The PSTI Act turns two this April. Consumer device security is increasingly a regulatory expectation rather than a differentiating feature, and ISPs are now expected to have embedded the Act’s requirements into their procurement and deployment processes. Whether that has happened consistently across the sector is an open question.

Connected North is a reasonable venue for vendors and ISPs to compare notes on compliance. Questions about how support period commitments affect device selection, how vulnerability disclosure policies are being tracked in practice, and what the OPSS enforcement pipeline looks like are all live conversations. Technology vendors with a strong compliance position will be making that case on the exhibition floor.

The use of AI tools in network management, fault prediction, and customer support has moved from experimental to operational for a number of ISPs. The questions are no longer primarily about whether these tools work, but about how to integrate them with existing platforms, how to manage the data quality they depend on, and how to govern their use in customer-facing contexts given the EU AI Act’s transparency requirements.

Expect sessions on this topic to attract strong interest, particularly from mid-tier ISPs who are deciding whether to build, buy, or partner for AI-assisted operations capability. The vendor landscape for these tools is still forming, and ISPs that are further along in their adoption will have practical experience that smaller operators are keen to hear.

UK broadband penetration is high and the remaining switcher pool is smaller than it was during the peak FTTP rollout period. Acquisition costs are rising in some markets, and the conversation is shifting toward retention, lifetime value, and the commercial case for premium service tiers.

Marketing around symmetric speeds, mesh Wi-Fi, and smart home connectivity is one dimension of this. Another is the role of customer service quality — including the performance of the CPE in the home and the speed of fault resolution — in driving net promoter scores and reducing voluntary churn. These topics sit at the junction of marketing, product, and operations, and Connected North tends to address them through a mix of case studies and research presentations.

Whether you are attending Connected North this year or following the industry conversation from elsewhere, the questions being discussed in Leeds this April are the same ones that will shape UK broadband strategy through the remainder of 2026. It is a good moment to take stock of where the sector is heading.