Summary

  • On 28 September 2026 Ofcom ordered Openreach to withdraw its Incremental New to Openreach Customer Offer, a targeted wholesale FTTP discount.
  • Ofcom allowed the other notified offers, including a smaller geographic rebate. The boundary was the margin a reasonably efficient rival network could earn after paying for duct access.

A cheap broadband connection can look like a gift to the next household and a trap for the network trying to reach it. In its September decision, Ofcom drew that line through Openreach’s wholesale offers. It ordered the national Incremental New to Openreach Customer Offer withdrawn. It let the other notified fibre and Ethernet offers proceed. The regulator’s objection was specific: the national price could squeeze the room between Openreach’s wholesale fibre charge and the cost of using its poles and ducts to build a competing network.

The formal statement says those targeted customers matter because alternative fibre builders need take-up, not merely miles of installed cable. A new network pays to reach a street, then needs enough customers to recover that investment. Openreach, still judged to have significant market power, can cut the wholesale price for customers moving to its fibre while leaving other prices intact. Ofcom found that a reasonably efficient rival matching the discount might be unable to recover its costs. It therefore ruled the national offer’s charges neither fair nor reasonable and used its direction power to withdraw the offer.

A geographic offer aimed at areas where another large network is present survived. It offered a smaller rebate, and Ofcom judged the risk to long-term competition insufficiently plausible on the facts before it. Ethernet discounts, other fibre incentives and an extension of Equinox also escaped intervention. The 2026–31 access framework allows Openreach to compete on price while preserving a cost-recovery path for firms using physical infrastructure access. Conditional offers receive 120 days’ notice; geographic discounts can require Ofcom’s consent. This decision shows that scrutiny is about the offer’s mechanism and margin, rather than the mere existence of a discount.

The market test now moves to orders. Retail providers decide which network receives a new customer; alternative networks need enough of those choices to make their build economics work. A blanket “discounts are good” slogan misses the acquisition target. A blanket “discounts are bad” slogan misses the offer Ofcom allowed. The decision’s sharp edge is that a dominant wholesaler cannot use its price sheet to remove the rung on which a reasonably efficient network must stand.

Ofcom’s published ruling gives a regulatory judgement, not post-decision evidence of actual customer switching or rival losses. New price schedules, order flows and take-up after implementation would show whether the line it drew holds in practice. The regulator has made the first move. The providers buying wholesale access will make the next one.