BT’s Openreach ordered by Ofcom to pull new customer deal

BT’s Openreach has been ordered to withdraw a heavily discounted offer aimed at new customers after the industry watchdog said the deal was “not fair and reasonable” and could damage competition from other broadband network providers.

Ofcom said its final decision was to step in and force Openreach to pull the “Incremental New to Openreach” offer, which gave internet service providers a monthly discount of up to £9.50 for up to 30 months in order to attract new full fibre customers onto its network.

Ofcom said: “We have determined that the large discount involved – up to £9.50 per customer for up to 30 months – may mean that other reasonably efficient operators couldn’t match it while also recovering their costs.

“In addition, the offer is aimed exclusively at new customers, so could stymie alt nets’ ability to scale up their customer base at a time when around half of households that have access to full-fibre broadband are yet to sign up.”

It added: “For these reasons, we consider the offer would be unfair and could harm sustainable competition, which is essential for low prices and better services in the long run, as well as helping to power the UK’s growth and productivity.”

But Ofcom said it was not intervening in other commercial offers Openreach is planning to introduce with smaller discounts.

James Lowther, Openreach’s commercial managing director, said: “We put this offer forward in good faith to help our customers compete and deliver better value for households.

“While we continue to believe the offer would have benefited customers and competition, we’ll review the decision carefully and continue to engage constructively with Ofcom and our customers.

“We’ll launch our other offers and continue to compete fairly.”