Summary

  • Ofcom’s 27 October final Hull decision ends KCOM’s duty to supply new regulated dark-fibre access. Existing qualifying circuits receive a three-year transition, down from the five years proposed in consultation.
  • The old circuits retain a benchmarked price during that period. Ofcom also ends automatic annual leased-line pricing reports, relying on its power to demand information when needed.

A dark fibre circuit is sold without the operator’s electronic equipment lighting it. In Hull, Ofcom has decided that KCOM will no longer have to offer that regulated product to a new customer. The existing customers do not fall off a cliff: circuits bought from 1 November 2021 through 31 October 2026 retain the regulated service for three years. The consultation had proposed five. That change is the headline in a market where a circuit can be easy to discontinue on paper and awkward to replace in a building.

Ofcom says take-up of KCOM’s regulated dark fibre was extremely limited. The exact March 2026 circuit count is redacted. KCOM argued that five years was excessive. MS3 also favoured three years, but wanted benchmark pricing for only the first two. Ofcom chose the shorter period and kept the price benchmark for the whole transition. The decision protects a customer’s existing line and its price rule while drawing a hard boundary around new regulated orders.

The regulator’s replacement logic has two parts. KCOM must still supply regulated active leased-line products, in which the provider runs the electronics. Competitors can also use the new physical-infrastructure access remedy to build on KCOM’s ducts and poles. KCOM may sell dark fibre commercially. Ofcom explicitly says a future request for a regulated dark-fibre product would not be reasonable in light of those alternatives. An old circuit therefore has a protected path; a new one has a different negotiation.

Hull has more competing network coverage than it did in 2021: Ofcom says 80–89% of premises had at least one alternative full-fibre network in January 2026. KCOM still held about 71–80% of wholesale local-access connections in March. Coverage measures where a rival network can reach; share measures connections actually held. The first figure does not migrate the second. A business with a particular endpoint and circuit requirement must test the alternative route at that endpoint.

Ofcom has also retired KCOM’s automatic annual pricing transparency reports. It says section 135 of the Communications Act lets it request the same information when a specific question arises. That swaps a regular flow of evidence for a regulator-triggered request. The immediate contest is over actual replacement circuits and prices, not the elegance of the five-year market review.

Official sources