Inca warns of ‘unjustified’ Openreach prominence in comms review

With the UK’s communications regulator ending the consultative phase of its telecoms access review (TAR), the Independent Networks Cooperative Association (Inca), has urged Ofcom to ensure the review secures the future of infrastructure investment, fosters regulatory consistency, and promotes a fair and competitive landscape across all fixed telecoms markets, but is warning that designating market leader Openreach as the default provider in areas where network competition is presumed to be unviable would be “unjustified” and “short-sighted”.

Ofcom’s Telecoms access review 2026 policy consultation for UK broadband sets out plans designed to help full-fibre gigabit broadband to reach almost all UK homes and businesses over the next two years.

The regulator believes full-fibre broadband is on course to become available to 96% of homes and businesses within the next two years, and that its new proposal in the Telecoms access review 2026-31 will promote the necessary levels of competition and investment in full-fibre networks.

Ofcom believes it’s incentivising existing networks to invest while making it cheaper and easier for new entrants to the market to build using BT-owned Openreach’s ducts and telegraph poles. As a result, Ofcom claims, the UK has seen one of the fastest rates of roll-out of full-fibre broadband in Europe, with industry investment ranging between £3bn and £6bn each year.

The regulator was also adamant its regulation to bring near-universal, high-quality connections to businesses and communities across the UK will also unlock the economic potential of remote communities, enable productivity gains and support public services as they become more digital.

With the consultation period for the TAR ending on 12 June 2025, Inca revealed that as part of its role as the representative voice of the UK’s alternative broadband network (Altnet) sector, it has made a formal response to the consultation, urging Ofcom to adopt a forward-looking regulatory framework that unlocks long-term private investment, recognises the crucial role altnets are playing in driving full-fibre roll-out in rural and hard-to-reach communities, and to ensure future regulation doesn’t further entrench the market power of the incumbent.

In its official submission, Inca made a number of specific recommendations for Ofcom, including: ensuring investment incentives are aligned across all markets served by the same physical networks; regulating consistently across residential and business markets to ensure a level playing field for atnets in competition with BT; requiring BT to transparently co-develop improvements to physical infrastructure access (PIA) with customers; and ensuring that PIA asset valuations are truly representative and “fair share” rules are applied to Openreach, as well as other users of PIA assets.

Other items included supporting emerging altnets through robust wholesale pricing safeguards and managing the ongoing the copper-to-fibre network transition in a way that supports – not undermines – altnet network deployments.

“The TAR will set the direction of travel for UK digital infrastructure, [and] altnets have proven they can deliver gigabit networks at scale – and what is now needed is a regulatory environment which supports sustainable competition and investment in every part of the market, from urban businesses to rural homes,” said Inca chief executive Paddy Paddison.

“There is no justification for limiting delivery in less competitive areas to a single provider,” he said. “Such a decision massively underestimates the scale and success of full fibre network deployment by altnets, whose coverage has increased by 27% year-on-year to reach 16.4 million premises by the end of 2024, delivering connectivity to a third of UK premises in harder-to-reach rural areas, and is at odds with government policy where Project Gigabit has provided public funding to altnets to build networks in precisely those locations.”