Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

Softer Blow for BT as Ofcom UK Revise its Wholesale Broadband Price Cuts

Tuesday, Aug 20th, 2013 (11:02 am) - Score 760

The UK telecoms regulator has today issued a correction to its original July 2013 proposal (here) that would force BT into reducing the cost of their fixed line wholesale broadband services (WLR, SMPF, MPF) to ISPs. The changes represent only a small price difference of a few pence to a few pounds but then the original proposal wasn’t huge either.

As before the prices would be set by charge controls linked to inflation (CPI – Consumer Price Index), which Ofcom believes can provide “an incentive for BT to make efficiency gains“. But the regulator found errors in its calculation of “non-pay operating costs in the Cost Model“.

Advertisement

On top of that it’s also had to make an adjustment to the ranges for SMPF rentals, MPF rentals and WLR rentals to reflect the “sensitivity for broadband line testing which was not reflected in the published ranges“.

Just to clarify. WLR refers to BT’s own Wholesale Line Rental product and MPF/SMPF typically references fully or shared unbundled (LLU) broadband and phone lines from ISPs like TalkTalk or Sky Broadband etc.

The adjustment has affected a whole set of different prices, for example the annual cost to an ISP of renting a fully unbundled (MPF) line is currently £84.26 +vat and Ofcom originally proposed that this should be adjusted to £83.71 (CPI-3%) but has now adjusted this in the other direction to £85.61 (CPI-0.75%). Note: the price is actually variable depending on the movement of CPI (see the document below).

Similarly the current cost of WLR is £93.27 and Ofcom initially proposed that this be tweaked downwards to £88.54 (CPI-5.0%). But today’s change means the new proposal sits at £90.66 and that a CPI-2.5% be applied. In other words nearly all of the price changes have moved upwards and that means a softer blow for BT.

Advertisement

As usual though the changes are so small that they’re unlikely to have a huge impact on the actual end-user price of consumer broadband and phone services.

Ofcoms Revised BT and LLU Line Prices
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/llu-wlr-cc-13/correction.pdf

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
100Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £23.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £25.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £25.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £19.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
100Mbps
Gift: None
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £19.00
300Mbps
Gift: None
toob UK ISP Logo
toob £22.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £23.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6167)
  2. BT (3694)
  3. Politics (2781)
  4. Business (2489)
  5. Openreach (2447)
  6. Building Digital UK (2365)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2206)
  8. FTTC (2094)
  9. Statistics (1953)
  10. 4G (1860)
  11. Virgin Media (1814)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1619)
  13. Fibre Optic (1492)
  14. Wireless Internet (1478)
  15. 5G (1457)
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon