Wholesale local access market review: Recovering the costs of investment in network expansion

On 31 March 2017, we published a consultation on our wholesale local access market review proposals, for the future regulation of the market for the provision of local access services, used to provide telephone and broadband internet services (including superfast broadband) to residential and business consumers. In this consultation, we also set out our proposals for charge controls for certain wholesale services.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport recently announced that it had received a proposal from BT to voluntarily roll out at least 10 Mbit/s universal broadband for the entire country by the end of 2020.

The Government has not yet decided whether to accept BT’s offer, but if it were to do so, we would expect BT to enter into a clear and public agreement with the Government.

This document sets out how we now propose to amend our charge control proposals, in the light of the additional relevant costs that BT would incur, should BT enter into a clear and public agreement with the Government committing BT to make the investment in universal broadband.

Draft statement published 23 February 2018

This draft statement sets out the conclusions of our wholesale local access market review in relation to the UK excluding the Hull Area.