Tech and AI

Openreach will be allowed to raise copper prices from April 2029 in areas with more than 90 per cent ultrafast coverage

By Staff Writer  |  12 September 2026

Ofcom set out the next stage of the copper to fibre transition on 9 September, telling an industry conference that from April 2029 Openreach will be able to increase copper prices in exchange areas where ultrafast coverage exceeds 90 per cent. The same speech disclosed three pieces of work on artificial intelligence in telecoms, one of which concerns whether defensive AI can be deployed under the regulator's cyber security rules.

Natalie Black, Ofcom's Group Director for Infrastructure and Connectivity, gave the keynote to a connectivity conference in London on 9 September. The pricing decision is the operative part. The regulator's framework has for some years moved regulation progressively off copper and onto full fibre, which supports Openreach's own migration while leaving room for competing networks to win custom. What the speech added was a date and a threshold: April 2029, and exchange areas above 90 per cent ultrafast coverage.

The reasoning is that availability has largely been solved and take-up has not. Nine in ten homes can now access ultrafast broadband, but, as Black put it, fibre passing a front door is not the same as a household using it. Allowing the copper price to rise where an alternative is demonstrably available is a way of making the old product less attractive than the new one without switching the old one off by fiat.

Three lines of work on AI

The speech also disclosed a programme of work at the regulator on artificial intelligence in networks, in three parts. The first asks how the use of AI is starting to affect what telecoms customers experience, with initial views to be published later in September. The second asks what steps are needed so that defensive AI can be deployed effectively under the regulator's cyber security rules; Black said she thought Ofcom might be the first regulator in the world to take that on, and that the project would also launch later in September. The third asks how AI is being deployed inside networks, what capacity that requires and how those networks are to be assured.

Data centres come into scope

The forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will bring data centres and critical suppliers within the regulatory perimeter. For anyone designing, building or operating one, that turns resilience from a commercial preference into a compliance obligation with a named regulator behind it.

That is why the forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill is so important. It brings data centres and critical suppliers into scope, strengthens information sharing, and promotes a more system-wide approach to risk.

Natalie Black, Group Director for Infrastructure and Connectivity, Ofcom, 9 September 2026

On mobile the speech was blunter than the usual coverage statistics allow. Operators have put around 10 billion pounds into their networks since 2020 and average prices have fallen by about a fifth in real terms over five years, while average data use has more than doubled. Even so, people get the level of performance needed for typical everyday uses less than four fifths of the time, and on international comparison the United Kingdom sits in the bottom third of comparable advanced economies. The stated ambition is good connectivity at least 90 per cent of the time, wherever the user happens to be.

Two further items bear on site work. The regulator intends to release more than 5 GHz of millimetre wave spectrum to relieve capacity bottlenecks in the busiest areas, and is looking at the upper 6 GHz band after that. It has also published findings from a mobile pilot run with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority together with data on planning approval rates across the country, which is the first time that particular obstacle has been put in front of local authorities with numbers attached.

April 2029 is far enough away to be planned for and close enough to matter to anyone signing a copper based contract now. The threshold is the part to watch, because it will bite in some exchange areas years before it bites in others.