Openreach Reduce UK Prices for Certain FTTC and FTTP Broadband Tiers
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has this afternoon announced some tweaks and reductions to the prices of several Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2 inc. SOGEA) based broadband products for UK internet service providers, which impacts their 55Mbps (10Mbps upload), 80Mbps (20Mbps up) and 160Mbps (30Mbps up) tiers.
The core changes primarily reflect the impact of Ofcom’s recent Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR), which for example changed their regulated pricing tier from 40Mbps to 80Mbps and made a variety of other tweaks to existing rules. Openreach had previously announced some pre-TAR changes and so part of this represents their final post-TAR pricing.
The first briefing in today’s list thus notifies ISPs about a price reduction to FTTC and SOGEA’s 55/10 and 160/30 rental pricing (includes those few still on G.fast lines) and the withdrawal of a previously announced temporary special offer. For example, the annual rental on a 55Mbps SOGEA line was due to be set at £202.63 +vat (£16.88 monthly) between 1st April 2026 and 31st March 2027, but the new briefing indicates this will now be set at £197.09 (£16.42 monthly) from 1st July 2026 onwards. Overall, it’s only a small reduction.
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The second briefing is more focused on Openreach’s implementation of 80Mbps as the new Ofcom regulated pricing tier for FTTC / SOGEA and FTTP lines from 1st May 2026. The biggest impact here is on annual rentals, which for example will drop from £268.44 +vat (£22.37 monthly) in April 2026 to £206.12 (£17.17 monthly) from May 2026. This makes the 80/20 tier slightly cheaper than the old 40/10 (£213.99) for ISPs to rent.
Openreach also introduces four newly charge-controlled FTTP 80/20 one-off connection charges for specific areas, which makes it a bit cheaper in certain scenarios. However, many of the changes announced today are too small for ISPs to pass on, although we’d expect ISPs to reduce their 80Mbps packages in price, and we also wouldn’t be surprised to see a few providers shifting users from 40Mbps to 80Mbps.
Just remember that the price ISPs pay for the service at wholesale is not the same as the price consumers (you) pay at retail, which is because ISPs have to add all sorts of extra costs on top (e.g. 20% VAT, profit margins, network services / features / capacity etc.). Consumer broadband is still a very low margins business.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I can imagine that ISPs with customers still on SOGEA and who aren’t able to get FTTP from Openreach yet may be incentivised to move all their customers to the 80/20 profile, even if a customer can’t get 80/20 speeds, just for the reduced costs compared to 40/2, 4/10, and 55/10 profiles. Though even putting everyone on default 55/10 would be a cost saving, allowing Openreach (or more accurately, BT Wholesale) to withdraw 40/2 and 40/10 profiles.
“…allowing Openreach (or more accurately, BT Wholesale) to withdraw 40/2 and 40/10 profiles.”
You correct first time, its Openreach that set the profiles not BT Wholesale.
Still bt charging an arm and a leg, reaping profits and abusing the monopoly position.
What monopoly?
Openreach pricing is regulated (as the article clearly points out).
The regulatory landscape is absolutely not stacked in Openreach’s favour. Altnets don’t have price controls, they can pick and choose where they operate, and PIA (using Openreach’s physical assets) makes it significantly cheaper to enter the market and offer artificially lower pricing than Openreach is able to.
I was surprise the old SoGfast 160/30 reduced price is very small margin. Still rip off in UK by Openreach.
Oooh, perhaps I can get my relatively modest (by 2026 standards) 160/30 FTTP service a bit cheaper soon. We don’t really need more, although I admit that if the 330/50 tier came down to the same price bracket, I’d probably have it! Openreach is our only option here (and I’m grateful to finally have fibre at all), so we can’t go for one of the much cheaper altnets.