Ofcom has ordered Openreach to withdraw its 'Incremental New to Openreach' commercial offer, ruling that the discount scheme risked distorting competition in the UK's full-fibre broadband market.

The offer would have paid internet service providers a monthly discount of up to £9.50 (€11) per customer for as long as 30 months when they brought new full-fibre customers onto the Openreach network. In a decision published on 28 September 2026, the regulator concluded that rivals building their own fibre infrastructure would struggle to match those terms while covering their costs.

Ofcom also flagged a second problem with the design of the offer. Because the discount applied only to customers new to Openreach, the scheme risked pulling subscribers away from alternative network operators — the so-called altnets — and making it harder for those operators to build viable customer bases. Operators such as Nexfibre, CityFibre-compatible ISPs and other wholesale customers depend on scale to justify continued fibre investment.

The regulator additionally tightened the process around such deals. Openreach must now give Ofcom, and the wider industry, advance notice of certain types of commercial offers before launching them. The requirement effectively ends the practice of the former BT monopoly introducing aggressive wholesale pricing without warning, a recurring point of friction in the UK market since Openreach was legally separated from BT in 2017.

The commercial stakes are significant. Openreach's full-fibre footprint has been expanding rapidly under its FTTP build programme, but altnets have collectively connected millions of premises in overlapping areas. Discounts tied to customer acquisition in those overlap zones directly affect which networks win the subscriber, and the 'Incremental New to Openreach' structure — paying ISPs to move customers across — sat squarely in that contested territory.

Openreach accepted the ruling while defending its intent. James Lowther, Managing Director for Commercial at Openreach, said: "Ofcom's decision not to approve our incremental FTTP new to Openreach offer is in line with their consultation position. We put this offer forward in good faith to help our customers compete and deliver better value for households […] While we continue to believe the offer would have benefited customers and competition, we'll review the decision carefully and continue to engage constructively with Ofcom and our customers."

The phrase "in line with their consultation position" signals that Ofcom had already signalled scepticism about the offer during its review, and that Openreach proceeded anyway — a calculation that has now cost the wholesaler a tool it presumably hoped would accelerate FTTP take-up against rival networks.

Nexfibre, the wholesale fibre network operator backed by infrastructure investors and using Openreach's main altnet competitor model, welcomed the decision but pushed for more. A company spokesperson said: "Ofcom's decision today is a positive step towards protecting competition in the UK fibre market, although we would have liked to see the regulator go further."

That closing remark points to the broader debate now running through UK telecoms policy: how hard Ofcom should constrain Openreach's pricing behaviour while the country's fibre upgrade remains incomplete. Incumbent-scale wholesale discounts can accelerate full-fibre adoption among households, but they can also starve smaller networks of the subscriber volumes they need to finance further builds.

The withdrawal of the offer removes one lever from Openreach's commercial toolkit, but the underlying competitive pressure in overlapping fibre footprints remains. Openreach says it will review the decision and keep engaging with the regulator, while altnets will watch closely to see whether Ofcom's new advance-notice requirement for commercial offers signals a more interventionist posture toward Openreach pricing going forward.