BT Openreach UK Raises Ethernet and Excess Construction Charges

BTOpenreach has moved to comply with the requirements of Ofcom’s earlier Leased Lines Charge Control (LLCC), which was published as part of the telecom regulators Business Connectivity Market Review, and has raised its Excess Construction Charges (ECC) by just over 1%.

The Business Connectivity Market Review initially forced Openreach to slash the cost (by -29% on average) of its 100Mbps to 10Gbps capable Ethernet and Leased Line services to business customers, ISPs and mobile operators on 1st April 2013 (here), but it also left room for future price rises. As a result the latest adjustments will come into forced one year on from those changes on 1st April 2014.

It should be noted that Excess Construction Charges (ECCs) typically cover the cost of either providing additional services or dealing with “situations where the normal cost of providing service is in excess of that listed within the Openreach price list“. The following charges are typically more of interest to business connections than consumers and should not be confused with the separate Distance Based Charge (DBC) that can be applied to FTTP on Demand (FoD) lines (though some ECC’s could apply to certain FoD lines).

Openreach has also increased the cost of its Cablelink (Ethernet service) rental and connection charges by up to 3% to reflect an “inflationary increase in costs“.