BTOpenreach Tweaks UK Line Rental and Ethernet Prices for 2015

BTOpenreach, which holds the responsibility for maintaining much of BT’s national telecoms network across the United Kingdom, has on New Year’s Eve announced a heap of new price reductions and increases for their line rental (WLR and LLU), Ethernet and various other connectivity services.

The changes, which will become effective from 1st April 2015, appear to be broadly in line with Ofcom’s requirements under their Fixed Access Market Reviews 2014 (FAMR) and related Charge Controls. Typically these prices represent what ISPs pay and that’s before we factor in the cost of additional services and the need for providers to make a profit, thus the retail price is often a fair bit higher.

As usual there are literally hundreds of changes (here and here) and so we’ll only highlight some of the more interesting or consumer relevant adjustments. For example, BT’s own Basic Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) product will see its annual rental charge of £91.05 reduced by -1.7% to £89.50 (£7.45 +vat per month) and the one-off new supply charge will fall by -6.6% to £41.55.

Elsewhere ISPs that make use of Local Loop Unbundling (LLU allows providers to take over full or partial control of BT’s lines by installing their own kit in the operators telephone exchanges), such as TalkTalk and Sky Broadband, will see the rental price of a fully unbundled (MPF) line increase by +1.6% to £87.48. Meanwhile the one-off charge for a new connection will fall by -1.5% to £45.74.

It’s also interesting to note that Openreach will be increasing the energy usage price for LLU and Access Locate by 8.97% to 12.88 pence per kWh (kilowatt-hour) in line with the terms of the LLU (Revised Access Network Facilities Agreement) and Access Locate contracts. Apparently this change is being driven by an increase in BT’s raw energy costs.

On top of all that Openreach’s Excess Construction Charges (ECC) and Ethernet Cablelink services will also see rises of between 1.6% and 2.3% across the board. A lot of the various changes reflect the usual inflationary increases, although some relate more directly to Ofcom’s regulatory approach.