Openreach (BT) has confirmed that the first trial of their SOGEA based SOGFast service, which will allow UK consumers to order an “ultrafast broadband” (up to 330Mbps) standalone G.fast line without also needing to take a phone (voice) service, will begin in July 2017 and run until December 2017.
At this point our regular readers are probably already familiar with the still-in-development Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA) product for Openreach’s ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) lines, while the comically named SOGFast is merely the G.fast variant of that same solution (more details here and here).
The SOGEA and SOGFast products represent a key shift in how Openreach sells digital communication services to consumers. At present if you want a hybrid “fibre broadband” service from the operator (e.g. FTTC or G.fast) then you first need to have a working copper phone line. However SOGEA and SOGFast will allow consumers to order a line just for broadband, while the voice service can optionally be added later via VoIP.
The new approach is much more in keeping with today’s market, where consumers are increasingly making much more use of VoIP and Mobile for their voice calling needs and often only take traditional copper “phone” line rental in order to get a home broadband connection (where required).
Openreach Statement
We’re pleased to announce the Single Order G.fast (SOGFast) CP trial phase pricing.
The trial will be free of charge (transactions and rental charges set at £0).
Our SOGFast free of charge prices are set in order to encourage necessary CP engagement and volumes. The purpose of the trial is to test deployment and technology capabilities and capture learnings and customer experiences of the Fulfilment and Assurance order journeys.
The SOGFast trial prices will apply from the beginning of the trial (expected to start at the beginning of July 2017), and will be valid throughout the trial phase referred to above.
So far the trials of SOGEA and SOGFast appear to be holding to the operator’s original schedule, which means that they could still be ready for commercial deployment during early 2018. In theory both services might end up being a tiny bit cheaper than the current phone line rental + broadband bundle approach of existing packages.
However we should caution that anybody expecting the full cost of line rental to be magically dropped will be in for a big disappointment. The physical copper line is still needed for broadband and as such most of that line rental cost will need to be merged into the single rental fee for broadband (i.e. the traditional ‘voice’ component of a line doesn’t add very much to what you pay).
SOGFast itself will initially only be available to the small proportion of premises covered by Openreach’s 330Mbps G.fast broadband pilot (initial coverage details), which has only just started to go live.
Comments are closed