Ofcom has determined that the headline commercial offer may not allow altnets to recover costs and drive take-up, hindering the development of sustainable competition
The regulator sought input on whether Openreach’s discounts would breach its fair and reasonable pricing obligations
On 28 September 2026, in the UK, Ofcom published a statement on its decisions relating to a suite of new commercial offers from Openreach. In June 2026, Openreach notified the regulator of several offers for fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and ethernet wholesale services. Ofcom responded by swiftly launching a call for evidence (CFI) to gather evidence and views from market participants. On 28 July 2026, the regulator then published a consultation setting out its draft decisions on the geographic and/or conditional offers announced by the former incumbent, including its assessment on whether:
The relevant conditional terms raise competition concerns requiring ex-ante intervention;
The geographic price differentiation in one of the offer amounts to undue discrimination and if so whether Openreach's application for consent to implement geographic pricing where this would be otherwise prohibited should or should not be granted; and
The offers raise concerns about low pricing in relation to Openreach's requirement for charges to be fair and reasonable, and/or raise more general concerns about undue discrimination that is capable of harming competition.
In a novel move, Ofcom proposed to block one of the former incumbent’s commercial offers
Ofcom’s provisional conclusions were notable in that they would, for the first time, direct Openreach withdraw a proposed fibre discount, specifically the main “Incremental New to Openreach (NTO) Customer Offer”. Meanwhile, the regulator proposed not to intervene in relation to the other notified offers.
In this statement, Ofcom has outlined its decisions on whether Openreach’s commercial offers raise competition concerns under the regulatory framework established by the Telecoms Access Review (TAR) 2026-31 statement. Among other things, the review determined that while consumers are increasingly taking advantage of the fibre services available to them, Openreach still has significant market power (SMP) and in turn the ability and incentive to act in ways that could unfairly undermine the development of competition. Given the importance of take-up to the creation of sustainable, long-term competition, Ofcom’s framework is designed to maintain “a reasonable opportunity for reasonably efficient altnets to compete”, with scope for the regulator to intervene where necessary.
Ofcom’s provisional conclusions have carried through to statement
On that basis, Ofcom has therefore decided to direct Openreach to withdraw its Incremental NTO Customer Offer, carrying through its provisional decision. It concluded that Openreach’s wholesale charges under this offer would not be fair and reasonable because they would result in margins that may not allow a reasonably efficient operator to recover its costs, impacting the ability to maintain and grow a customer base. As such, there is a risk that the level of the offer prices could harm the development of network competition, to the detriment of consumers in the long-term. However, the regulator will not intervene in relation to Openreach’s other notified discounts, including the Geographic Incremental NTO Customer Offer in Virgin Media O2 areas. In response to the CFI, Virgin Media O2 argued that the offer had no justification and was a “targeted payment for placing contestable customers” back with Openreach. Ofcom has nevertheless concluded that, despite the targeting of a specific operator footprint, the scale of the discount does not amount to undue discrimination, while the conditionality of the offer does not potentially create a barrier to ISPs using a rival network.
