Ofcom has moved to provide stability for the market now that full fibre is available to over 80% of UK homes with regard to retiring the old copper network that Openreach operates today.
In exchanges where Openreach’s availability of its full fibre network has reached 90% of premises, the requirements to keep copper and fibre networks operating are set to be relaxed and was announced by Ofcom in the regulator’s keynote speech at Connected Britain.
This boils down to: in the areas with 90% full fibre, Openreach will be allowed to increase copper prices after April 2029. The exact words were “From April 2029, Openreach will be able to increase copper prices in exchange areas with more than 90% ultrafast coverage”. A few years ago this would have included G.fast, which can deliver ultrafast (usually defined as over 100 or 300 Mbps depending on who you are, but the G.fast product is dead. Therefore, the ultrafast option means full fibre – though there may be some nuance to Ofcom talking about ultrafast more often than naming a specific technology.
The PSTN switch-off has seen WLR prices increase substantially as a final hammer to force people to migrate or abandon their WLR services. At this point we don’t know what scale of price rises Openreach will apply with this copper switch-off migration where they get more pricing freedom in April 2029.
Looking at other parts of the keynote speech by Natalie Black, the theme is moving from simple data maps and coverage percentages towards a focus on the experience the public has when they live and work in a digital world. So it looks likely the regulator is shifting more to assessing how people use their connections, and how that influences how they interact with each other and the economy. There are already various reports that Ofcom produce on this, but we’d add that while surveys and data shared by services can be useful to get a true picture of the UK, a lot more work will be needed, and this needs to be somewhere between ‘we surveyed 2,000 homes and 8 out of 10 say their WiFi is often broken’ studies and a full ONS census of every household.
“So my call to action is simple.
Let’s make the next phase of the UK’s connectivity story about quality people can feel.
Let’s move from measuring where a signal might exist to delivering a connection people can count on.
And let’s give people the confidence that whenever they need to connect, the connection will be there.
That is the ambition.
It is achievable.
And if we work together, we can deliver it.”
Natalie Black, Keynote speech to the Connected Britain Event, 9 September 2026, London
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So are they charging the 10% more even though they can’t get Fibre?
It’s reasonable to ask how this is likely to play out for people such as us, i.e. still more or less where we were in 2003 with a flaky DSL line. And now perennially “gigabit white” with no prospect of fibre from Openreach, Project Gigabit or anywhere else, and no viable alternatives. Are we sleepwalking into a situation where some of us will find our only fully viable (copper wire based) internet access ceased, with no obligation on anyone to deliver an alternative ?
Having just returned from a weeks holiday in the Rhinns of Galloway where the broadband speed varied from 0mbps to 2mbps at best but mostly at peak times around 0.5mbps at our accommodation. I assumed there was a fault on the line but conversations with the owner and her ISP revealed no fault and that the max speed available on the line was 8Mbps, the distance from the exchange accounting for the decrease we experienced. No chance of fibre any time soon. For goodness sake surely these must be the areas Openreach and the government should be focusing their efforts on. They are creating a country parts of which are becoming increasingly disadvantaged and divided in the digital age. We had a great holiday but it was an eye opener going back to dial up speeds and no mobile signal. It’s incredibly frustrating for the local populous who feel just left out in the wilderness.
I endorse this; you do not have to be geographically remote to find yourself without mobile coverage and no fallback when your VOIP goes down through a power cut. The official attitude to these situations is casual.
Is a microwave or line of sight link to the exchange an option or satalitte such as star link
There still needs to be consideration of those in the 90% ultrafast areas who don’t have anything but copper available to them: not clear how that situation will be handled.