Consultation: Promoting competition and investment in fibre networks – Initial proposals – Approach to remedies

Demand for fixed and mobile broadband connections is growing rapidly, from both people and businesses. To meet this demand, sizeable investment is needed to upgrade the UK’s broadband infrastructure. Whether to support fibre to the home broadband, connections to 5G mobile stations, or seamless business connectivity, more fibre networks will be needed to support the next generation of services in the UK. The UK Government has also signaled strong support for full fibre and wants 15 million premises to be connected by 2025.

Our goal is to support investment and competition in ultrafast services, to as many people and businesses as possible. In July 2018 we set out our broad strategy to support investment and competition in ultrafast services.

Our strategy is to secure investment in fibre networks by both BT and other companies by promoting network-based competition. We want to encourage BT's competitors to build networks rather than rely on access to the Openreach network. Competition is the best means to ensure continued investment in building and maintaining high quality, future-proofed telecoms networks.

Making sure alternative operators have a fair opportunity to invest at low cost is critical to this strategy. This means giving them access to the same benefits BT has to re-use existing duct and pole infrastructure on equivalent terms. This is being delivered through our physical infrastructure market review.

This document sets out our initial views on regulatory measures for wholesale fixed telecoms markets from 2021 which we think will, in combination with duct and pole access, best achieve our strategy to secure investment by promoting network-based competition.