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The CEO of network access provider Openreach (BT), Clive Selley, has warned Ofcom and the UK Government that he is “going to hold fire” on seeking approval for the final phase of the operator’s plan to deploy full fibre (FTTP) based broadband ISP technology to 30 million premises. At least until the regulator and tax environment show themselves to be favourable.
At present Openreach is investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of their new “full fibre” network to 25 million premises by December 2026 (here), which will include around 6.2m in rural or semi-rural areas. In addition, they’ve long expressed an ambition to reach “up to” 30m by 2030 (there are c.33m in the UK), which is often said to be partly dependent upon a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR) and government policy (planning and taxation etc.).
However, the news has recently been full of stories from senior figures at BT (as well as rivals like Virgin Media), most of whom have been complaining about the threat from a huge rise in business rates potentially impacting their plans (here and here). In response, Openreach’s boss also seems to now be warning that this, when combined with Ofcom potentially choosing not to soften their regulation enough (i.e. to reflect an increase in market competition), could result in the operator having to shelve or scale-back their plans for reaching 30m premises.
Clive Selley, Openreach CEO, said (FT):
“I’m going to hold fire getting approvals for that final 5mn tranche [of homes] until I see what comes out of the TAR.
If I can’t see where the regulation is going to land then I can’t articulate the business case [internally] and therefore that business case goes on hold until we see the final wording.
These are worrying times for the UK because, as the only credible builder for the last tranche of homes … it’s incumbent on us to keep the programme going”
No doubt some of Openreach’s rivals in the alternative network space, which would very much welcome the operator’s surrender of their build targets and retreating from costly rural deployments, may take exception to the incumbent describing themselves as “the only credible builder” for such premises. But in fairness they are the only large-scale builder in rural areas, with others like B4RN, Gigaclear, GoFibre, Quickline etc. tending to operate at a much smaller scale.
The risk for Openreach and BT, as hinted above, is that any weakening of their ambitions might risk leaving them at more of a competitive disadvantage in those rural areas. On the other hand, most of their rivals in the alternative network space are currently under heavy pressure from wider economic conditions (i.e. they may lack the ability to pick up the slack), particularly given how many of them have had to slow or stop their own builds.
As usual, there is a difficult balance act to be performed. The government needs to generate more money to fill holes in its next budget, while Ofcom has to consider the many vested interests of different market players and network operators have to figure out how they can continue building or pay investors back, without such projects becoming unviable (some may already be at risk of this).
Finally, it’s worth remembering that Clive Selley is technically not saying anything new, since Openreach have always pegged their plans for reaching “up to” 30m premises with FTTP on a favourable outcome from the TAR. But that was before the threat of much higher business rates entered the room, which adds another challenge.
The government have already had to put their Project Gigabit target – for reaching 99% of the UK with gigabit broadband – back from 2030 to 2032, but it’s now not impossible that this may end up having to be put back even further if they aren’t careful.