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The Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency and Openreach (BT) have revised downward their £149.7m Call Off 1 Project Gigabit contract – covering parts of Lancashire, North Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire, West and Mid-Surrey, Staffordshire, West Berkshire and Hertfordshire. This originally aimed to extend full fibre (FTTP) to 54,336 premises in remote areas, but will now reach 51,821.

Just to recap. The original contract was agreed all the way back in August 2024 and formed part of Openreach’s Single Supplier Framework agreement with BDUK (here), which saw them being chosen to deliver all of Project Gigabit’s Cross-Regional (Type C) procurements.

However, it’s important to remember that such contracts are not static and their scope, as well as committed levels of public funding, can change over time for a number of different reasons – informed by regular ‘Open Market Reviews’ of existing UK deployment plans. For example, commercial operators may expand or reduce their roll-out plans in the same region(s), which can reduce or grow the scope for public investment within those same contracted areas.

The contracted operator could also find the deployment to be more expensive, or possibly even cheaper, than previously envisaged. Such adjustments may occur due to changes in build costs and interest rates / inflation, as well as any unexpected obstacles to street works or greater efficiencies of build than planned or expected.

Suffice to say, there can be various reasons why the contracted scope of related builds and the level of allocated public funding may change a bit over time. The recent modification to Call Off 1 is another example of this, albeit a relatively small change in the grander scheme of things.

The official modification notice doesn’t provide much context for the change (we have asked Openreach to clarify) and simply states: “The awarded contract value has decreased from the original value of £149,700,000 to £146,905,866 … This is a cost change of -£2,794,134. The awarded premises have decreased (descoped) from the original 54,336 to 51,821. This is a scope change of -2,515.”

In short, Project Gigabit’s contracts can go through a lot of changes on their way to completion, and the above is an expected part of that evolution. The catch is that there may be further changes in the future, which could go in a different direction, so it’s not always easy to tell what the final picture will be until you actually reach the end.

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Rural-focused UK ISP Quickline, which is busy deploying a new gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) and fixed wireless (FWA) network across parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in England (3-Year Rollout Plan), has recently introduced a new 2.3Gbps (2,300Mbps) symmetric speed broadband package (their previous top tier was 1Gbps).

The new Full Fibre 2300 package is priced at just £59.99 per month on a 24-month minimum term contract (credits to one of ISPreview’s readers, Paul, for spotting it). All of their packages also continue to promote a commitment to “no mid-contract price rises“, free install, free router and offers up to £300 in switching credit if you need help to cover the cost of exiting your previous ISP contract early, during a switch.

Quickline currently aims to extend gigabit-capable broadband to a further 360,000 UK premises across thousands of rural communities (roughly 170k via publicly funded projects and almost 200k from commercial builds). The provider recently reported that they ended 2025 with 200,000 premises passed via full fibre (plus 200k more via wireless, although not all of those are gigabit-capable).

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Infracapital-backed alternative broadband ISP Fibrus, which is building a gigabit-speed full fibre (FTTP) network across rural parts of Cumbria (England) and Northern Ireland, has today launched a new campaign to help keep children in N.Ireland safe online. The ‘Surf Smart Stay Safe’ campaign is being delivered through a variety of workshops in Primary Schools across the country.

The first cohort of the campaign saw Fibrus deliver workshops to 350 P5-P7 pupils in Cookstown, Downpatrick and Randalstown, with the sessions designed to build children’s confidence in navigating the online world. Each workshop aims to empower children with age-appropriate resources to help tackle issues such as cyberbullying, password protection and fake news.

Created to work alongside a take home 12-page booklet, the programme also encourages parents to get involved in the activities with their children, helping spark constructive conversations at home about navigating the online world their children will encounter every day as they grow. This includes a series of puzzles, crosswords and practical advice to help build their understanding of what it means to stay safe online.

Colin Hutchinson, Group MD of Fibrus, said:

“Being a young person today means having more access than ever to the digital world, but there can be a serious side to it, including learning to stay safe online. We are very happy to work with community groups and schools across Northern Ireland in producing these very helpful booklets. Hopefully they will encourage hundreds of children to take a fresh look at staying safe online.

We’re committed to ensuring the communities we serve stay safe online and are proud to support young people with the knowledge and confidence they need to navigate the online world, which will be part of their lives for years to come.”

The operator’s new full fibre network, which recently passed a take-up rate of 30% (here), currently covers over 450,000 UK premises and around 332,700 of those are in N.Ireland.

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Buckingham-based alternative network provider Village Networks, which operates a number of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and Full Fibre (FTTP) gigabit broadband networks across rural parts of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire in England, has requested new powers from the regulator to support its future expansion.

The plan was revealed as part of the company’s application for Code Powers from Ofcom, which are typically sought in order to help speed-up deployments of new fibre networks and cut costs, not least by reducing the number of licences needed for street works. The powers can also help with supporting access to run new fibre via Openreach’s (BT) existing cable ducts and poles (PIA).

The announcement doesn’t include much detail, although as one of the market’s smaller but longest running providers, we aren’t expecting this to result in a major acceleration of their rollout (i.e. it’s probably more about continuing to expand, albeit more efficiently). VN tends to adopt more of a gradual organic approach to network expansion (see their latest company accounts).

Extract from Village Networks Code Powers Application

The Applicant is a network operator and Internet Service Provider offering internet connectivity over Fixed Wireless Access, owned FTTP networks and FTTP wholesale agreements, and by the provision of leased lines.

Dependent on the location, the Applicant currently delivers connectivity either via fibre or ethernet to a point-to-point or point-to multi point fixed network link, which connects premises via rx/tx external aerials. In other cases, the Applicant currently uses optical fibre from points of presence (PoPs) to reach individual premises via drop fibres.

The Applicant seeks Code powers to facilitate the expansion of its network and deployment across rural areas in the UK, for example Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, with 85% of customers of the Applicant’s network being in rural postcodes.

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A subtle but very important change is slowly happening behind the scenes of the UK’s consumer telecoms industry, as broadband and mobile providers start realising they need to adapt to the Competition and Markets Authority‘s (CMA) new guidance on unfair commercial practices, particularly around the complex issue of “price transparency“.

The relatively recent Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA), which contains various new price transparency provisions, officially attained Royal Assent on 24th May 2024. But as usual with these things, it took a bit longer for the CMA to produce the necessary guidance to help businesses know what they’d have to do in order to adapt to it, which finally happened on 18th November 2025.

The Guidance is naturally aimed at the companies that sell services to consumers, although as usual it doesn’t hurt for consumers to also be aware of these rules. The reason for this is that it could give you some additional ammunition to use, such as if ever you need to argue that a broadband or mobile provider misled you over its pricing (a few providers do still have a nasty habit of masking additional costs).

The new Guidance tackles such issues in a number of ways, albeit largely through requiring greater transparency and a clearer structure to the buying process. The full 58-page document contains all the necessary details and examples, but we’ve summarised a few of the key points below.

Key Price Transparency Rules

➤ The first interaction that many people have with their future service provider is often via an ‘invitation to purchase‘, which reflects when a trader gives information to consumers about a product and its price (i.e. this could be an advert or an item listing on a website etc.). This exists before the consumer makes an in-principle decision to purchase a product and before it is possible to make a purchase.

Traders are responsible for ensuring that the prices of the products presented in an invitation to purchase do not mislead consumers, in particular, the price presented should be “realistic, meaningful and attainable” for the product being advertised.

➤ The ‘total price‘ should be presented in the invitation to purchase in a clear and timely way that the consumer is likely to see and “must include any fees, taxes, charges or other payments” that the consumer will necessarily incur if they purchase the product. This includes any mandatory charges, even in early-stage advertising. If a consumer is later presented with new mandatory charges that were not disclosed at the outset, this is likely to breach the UCP provisions (rules).

Alternatively, if, because of the nature of the product, the price (or a part of it) cannot reasonably be calculated in advance, the invitation to purchase must include information that enables the consumer to calculate the non-calculable (parts of the) price. This will most commonly apply when the nature of the product means that the total price will depend on a consumer’s requirements. The information must be provided with as much prominence as the part of the total price that is calculable in advance and given in the invitation to purchase.

➤ Drip pricing is now prohibited. This reflects the practice of showing consumers an initial headline price for a product and subsequently introducing additional mandatory charges as consumers proceed with a purchase or transaction. In short, no more unexpected mandatory surcharges being added right at the end of the order process (e.g. if a hotel advertises a room for £100 and then adds an unexpected “weekend surcharge” of £25 per night right at the end of the order), unless of course the customer has specifically selected to add a truly optional extra feature.

➤ Partitioned pricing is “generally” prohibited. This reflects the practice of providing the component parts of a price without giving the overall total, which is now generally prohibited since it is not consistent with providing the ‘total price’ of the product. The requirement to provide the total price does NOT prevent a trader from offering consumers subsequent discounts so that the final price ends up being less than the originally advertised total price.

In practice, over the past few weeks and months, this has resulted in a number of broadband and mobile providers adjusting how they present their pricing, particularly with respect to charges for things like service activations, installations, and home delivery charges (usually used for routers). Some providers have already removed these charges entirely (i.e. absorbing them into monthly rental) or changed how they’re presented to be more transparent.

At the time of writing we still see a few telecoms providers, particularly at the smaller-scale end of the market, that probably need to do a bit more work to adjust for the new Guidelines. But most do appear to already be doing the right thing.

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Broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) has this morning confirmed that all new and existing Virgin TV 360 and Stream box customers with the ‘Sky Entertainment‘ channels (Sky Comedy, Sky Witness, and the soon to be relaunched Sky One) will soon also be able to access popular Sky Atlantic programming on channel 111, “at no extra cost“.

The addition of Sky Atlantic, which will take place on 1st April 2026, follows the news that HBO Max will also be available to subscribe to via Virgin TV 360 and Stream boxes when it launches in the UK next month. Sky Atlantic will give Virgin’s customers with the Sky Entertainment channels (c.1 million of them) access to view popular TV shows like ‘The Last Of Us’, ‘House of Dragon’, ‘Amadeus’ and many more.

New customers can take a Virgin TV package, including access to Sky Atlantic, by selecting a Virgin TV and broadband Flex bundle, with prices currently starting from £31.99 per month.

David Bouchier, VMO2’s Chief TV and Entertainment Officer, said:

“Our promise to our customers is simple – to offer seamless entertainment at incredible value – and the addition of Sky Atlantic on Virgin TV is testament to that. The channel is home to gripping drama and incredible stories from the UK and the US and has given us some of the biggest watercooler moments of our times. Now, over a million Virgin TV customers can enjoy Sky Atlantic with no added cost or action required.”

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The Government’s recently published Statement of Strategic Priorities (SSP) for telecommunications (here) appears to have rejected calls by some, but not all, alternative UK broadband networks for Ofcom to make access to run new fibre optic cables via Openreach’s (BT) existing cable ducts and poles cheaper in rural areas.

Network access provider Openreach is required to provide access to their existing cable ducts and poles via the regulated Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which has been extremely successful. This enables rival networks (altnets) to run their own fibre optic cables via the incumbent’s existing infrastructure – cutting down on build costs, disruption and speeding up rollouts of gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) broadband.

However, some altnets have consistently argued (here, here and here) that such deployments are being hampered by the rules and high costs of harnessing the PIA product in rural areas. For example, the founder of Fibrus, Conal Henry, previously stated (here) that altnets must pay for the use on a per-metre basis, which he said was “disproportionately impacting rural areas“.

Rural properties are on average 200 metres away from their nearest neighbour, compared to just 10m in urban areas. As a result, Henry says it can cost altnets “almost twenty times more” to deploy new gigabit broadband lines to rural areas than in towns and cities.

The counterargument

On the flip side, the fact that rural builds cost significantly more than urban ones is nothing new, and it’s worth bearing in mind that Openreach will also suffer that impact when they build the infrastructure (they still need to gain a fair return on the investment for it to be viable).

The incumbent is also not magically immune to the realities of rural deployments being disproportionately more expensive than urban ones. This is partly because there are fewer premises to reach, and they’re often dispersed over a much wider area of difficult terrain. Finally, the incumbent has maintenance, repairs and other upkeep costs to consider too.

Openreach has previously argued that the prices they charge for PIA may actually be too low and that rivals don’t share access to their own infrastructure in the same way (note: altnets that receive public investment are often obliged to offer a degree of infrastructure access, but this is rarely as attractive as PIA). On the other hand, smaller altnets carry a lot of risk and often desire to protect the value of their asset vs those with Significant Market Power (SMP), such as Openreach – it’s not an even battlefield.

However, the argument over this – as spotted by the Telegraph (paywall) – appears to have already been partly settled inside the depths of the Government’s recently published SSP, which rejected the idea of Ofcom moving from a ‘No Undue Discrimination‘ (NUD) approach to an ‘Equivalence of Input‘ (EOI) approach.

In a NUD approach, Openreach must treat all the networks in a fair and transparent, but not necessarily identical way: different terms could be offered to different customers if the difference is justified. In an EOI approach, the same terms must be offered to all customers. One altnet proposed that, for the 20% of premises for which PIA charges are the highest, operators should pay a discounted price based on a national average price, that is, based on the total PIA cost Openreach needs to recover for all premises and the total number of premises. But the government disagreed.

Government Response

The government’s view is that a continuing with a NUD approach is the most appropriate and proportionate means by which to achieve a fast roll-out of fibre. We believe a change of approach could have a negative impact on roll-out if it leads to significant organisational and structural changes within Openreach. Additionally, a change would only have a limited positive impact on competition as Ofcom’s interpretation of NUD requires strict equivalence where possible, as set out in the regulator’s consultation on the Telecoms Access Review. Ofcom set out that any difference of treatment between Openreach and their competitors must not put the latter at a disadvantage in terms of cost, time or uncertainty. For new or upgraded services, Openreach would only be able to offer different terms in “exceptional” circumstances. We believe any change of approach would therefore create disruption for limited benefits. We also note that some altnets do not support a change of approach.

We do not agree Ofcom should move to a per-premise model of PIA charging for the most expensive rural areas. PIA charges are set so that Openreach can recover the cost of its physical infrastructure used by third parties, which we believe is an important principle of regulation. The changes proposed by the respondent mean that Openreach would no longer recover the full cost of its infrastructure. While they argue that the loss to Openreach will be negligible, these costs would accumulate over time and, even accounting for their SMP, it would be unfair to mandate Openreach to rent their infrastructure at a discounted price over any substantial period of time.

The proposed discount would also only apply to the 20% premises which use the highest length of the infrastructure network. This would be unfair to networks which connect premises which use a slightly shorter length of the network, as they would end up paying more for less use of the network.

Some stakeholders have shared changes to PIA rental charges could lead to lower prices in rural areas. DSIT has seen no evidence that higher operating costs (including PIA charges) in rural areas are driving up prices for consumers in those areas. Evidence suggests instead that price differences are more likely to be driven by overbuilding that is more common in urban areas, leading to operators offering discounts to gain market share. Furthermore, we have seen no evidence that lower PIA prices for operators in rural areas would lead to lower prices for consumers in those areas.

Conal Henry has already warned that the above decision may “all but put a stop to competitive rural broadband rollout … Decisions being made by this government are likely to establish a permanent digital divide between rural and urban Britain“, although wider economic challenges (e.g. rising build costs, higher interest rates and competition) have already resulted in quite a few altnets needing to scale-back or stop their FTTP builds in both urban and rural areas. Similarly, a number of altnets have, over the past 12-18 months, either withdrawn or scaled-back their Project Gigabit contracts in rural areas.

The future of PIA pricing and regulation for the next 5 years will be set next month, when Ofcom publishes their final Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR) statement. The expectation is that this may contain some tweaks for PIA pricing too (this is set by Ofcom, NOT Openreach), albeit clearly not the sort of major shift that has been discussed above.

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Mobile operator Vodafone (VodafoneThree) has announced that they’ve deployed “dedicated” 5G and 4G mobile coverage to Aberdeen International Airport, which is one of Scotland’s busiest airports. But travellers will need to wait a “few months” more before the operator expands their fastest 5G Standalone (5GSA) technology to the same location.

The improvements follow the installation of a dedicated in-building 5G system by specialists Exchange Communications, which has previously conducted similar deployments at other busy locations, such as Southampton Airport in Southern England. The kit they deploy is usually multi-operator focused, thus Vodafone may not be the only mobile provider to benefit.

Andrea Donà, Chief Network Officer at VodafoneThree, said: “Our investment doesn’t stop at cities, towns and villages. We’re also ensuring our customers have the coverage they expect when visiting busy locations such as airports, stadiums, train stations and shopping centres. Aberdeen International is a great example of the work we are undertaking to improve our coverage for our customers and another clear signal of our ability to move at pace in our wider commitment of building the UK’s best network.”

Opened in July 1934, Aberdeen International Airport now serves over 3 million passengers each year and supports more than 3,400 jobs locally.

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Software development firm Bluehouse Technology has launched a new product, which is designed to make it much easier for alternative UK broadband providers to launch their own white-label style virtual eSIM based mobile (MVNO) network service – enabling them reach to customers beyond their physical fibre footprints.

We only rarely write about this side of the market (products targeted specifically at ISPs/altnets), but this one does offer more details than usual, which some consumers might also find interesting for background. The Bluehouse MVNO solution promises that ISPs will be able to “retain a substantial 60% share of net revenue” from their service, which is said to include various features (e.g. full Ofcom compliance, number porting, a hosted web portal, and an integrated travel eSIM service to enhance the customer proposition etc.).

The solution includes example retail offers — ranging from 10GB to unlimited data — that are said to be “benchmarked to be cheaper than all major UK operators, all on flexible rolling 30-day contracts“. But the actual end-user pricing would of course depend upon what the retail ISP chooses to charge.

The proposition itself is said to focus on a low-cost, low-risk model. The set-up fees are limited to a web portal fee of several thousand pounds and a monthly platform fee of several hundred pounds. Bluehouse promises that providers can go live with their own branded mobile service through this within just 6-8 weeks. The suggestion appears to be that an ISP using this could achieve a Year 1 break-even with as few as 350 subscribers and tickover thereafter of around 150 subs.

Chandru Mullaparthi, CEO of Bluehouse Technology, told ISPreview:

“We don’t just write code; we build software that businesses stake their operations on. Our MVNO solution is building on the success of our whitelabel products in the travel eSIM market and reflects this responsibility, providing Alt-Nets with a reliable, managed, and hosted platform that delivers immediate value to their business and their customers”.

One potential issue here is that eSIM providers have become extremely common over the past couple of years, so much so that we half expect the local pub to start offering its own eSIM at some point. The catch is that this does make for quite a crowded and increasingly confusing market.

At the same time many Altnets are already struggling with issues of weak brand familiarity and reputation (partly driven by uncertainty around consolidation), so it remains debatable whether adding a mobile service on top of that is going to be much of a goose to lay the golden egg.

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Ofcom has published their 9th annual (2026) monitoring report into the Net Neutrality guidelines, which were originally established to prevent unfair blocking or slowing of access to legal websites and internet services by broadband ISPs and mobile operators. Overall the UK telecoms regulator has “not identified any significant cause for concern“, although EE may have an issue with tethering restrictions.

The original rules meant that service providers couldn’t easily impose excessive restrictions against internet traffic and should treat almost all of it equally (i.e. they should avoid favouring specific services, such as by blocking or slowing access to rivals). However, there were some exceptions to this, such as when providers need to impose general traffic management, parental controls, court ordered blocks or for security measures (e.g. anti-virus/spam filtering) etc.

Ofcom then further softened these guidelines in 2023 (here), such as by allowing providers to offer premium quality retail packages (e.g. those with tweaks to deliver lower latency) and support for specialised services so that providers can deliver specific content and applications that need to be optimised (e.g. a limited allowance for network slicing on 5G mobile).

The regulator’s 2023 review also clarified some previous conflicts around the issue of zero rating (i.e. free mobile data), such as for cases where mobile operators excluded some websites giving a social benefit from being included in a customer’s billed data usage (e.g. those offering public health info. and support during the COVID-19 pandemic).

Suffice to say the latest report found no significant problems with any of the related monitoring areas. “We have not identified any significant cause for concern with respect to ISPs’ approaches to net neutrality, which were mostly unchanged from last year,” said the regulator.

Ofcoms Findings for Last Year (Net Neutrality)

The quality of fixed and mobile internet access services continues to improve as technology develops:

• The availability of the latest technologies for fixed broadband and mobile has increased since last year. As of July 2025, full fibre availability has grown from 69% to 78% of residential premises, and 5G coverage outside premises from at least one mobile network operator (MNO) has extended from 90%-95% to 94%-97% (very high to high confidence levels).

• Fixed broadband performance has improved, with average speeds growing by 28% (July 2024 to July 2025), primarily due to the increase in availability and take up of full fibre and gigabit-capable services. Also, more consumers are taking up 5G services and thus benefitting from the improved performance of this technology.

• Our analysis of ISPs’ network utilisation reports indicates that incidents of congestion on fixed networks remain rare, and while they happen more often on mobile networks, congestion is generally infrequent.

We have not identified any significant cause for concern with respect to ISPs’ approaches to net neutrality, which were mostly unchanged from last year:

• The ISPs continued to implement some traffic management measures on an ongoing basis, including blocking access to illegal content and age restricted content for under 18s and blocking or redirecting malicious traffic. In addition, we saw a slight increase in the use of exceptional traffic management, with a few ISPs using targeted measures to manage congestion during particularly busy peaks in traffic.

• Some mobile ISPs continued to offer a limited number of commercial zero-rating packages which were largely the same as last year. This included two open offers that zero-rated access to applications within a particular category of content (e.g. social media) and two closed offers zero-rating a specific service or select group of applications.

• As per last year, the key differentiator for fixed broadband retail packages was speed, while for mobile it was data allowance with some mobile ISPs also providing different speed tiers. Similarly, many of the specialised services described in last year’s report were provided again this year, specifically a drone service, multicast and voice prioritisation services.

• Some ISPs used the additional clarity and flexibility provided by our guidance to offer innovative new services. One ISP offered premium packages with a network priority boost triggered during congestion, while another has recently introduced a Speed Boost add-on which prioritises a customer’s traffic when activated. We also saw one ISP undertake a non-commercial trial of 5G slicing. However, as per last year’s report, ISPs have not made major changes to their approaches to net neutrality based on our guidance.

• We are engaging with one ISP in relation to its tethering policy.

The reference above to a ‘Speed Boost‘ add-on reflects the one that Vodafone recently launched (here), although we have seen others with a similar sort of service. Ofcom also mentions that they’re “engaging with one ISP in relation to its tethering policy“, which in reading through the report appears to reflect a concern with how EE (BT) restricts tethering (i.e. sharing your mobile broadband connection with other devices) of more than 12 devices on a regular basis.

“As explained in our guidance, restrictions on tethering are likely to be incompatible with the requirement on ISPs to treat all traffic equally irrespective of the terminal equipment used. We are engaging with EE on this matter to ensure its polices are fully aligned with the Regulation,” said Ofcom.