LONDON, March 17 (Reuters) – Britain said on Tuesday it would regulate BT Openreach’s national broadband network for another five years, with a price cap on a wider range of speeds, to drive competition and extend fibre connections to the final fifth of the country’s premises.
The competitive framework put in place by watchdog Ofcom in 2021 has resulted in nearly eight in 10 homes having access to full-fibre broadband, up from less than a quarter fives years, in a rapid turnaround.
Around three quarters have a choice of two providers – generally Openreach and Virgin Media or an alternative smaller network – but Ofcom said Openreach still retained significant market power and it could not remove regulation entirely.
It said it would cap the nominal price that Openreach can charge retail providers like Vodafone or Sky – who lease its infrastructure – for download speeds up to 80Mbit/s, rather than 40Mbit/s at present.
The prices of higher-speed products will remain unregulated, so providers had an incentive to invest in networks that can deliver faster speeds, it said on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Kate Holton)
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