BT Openreach Cuts FTTP Construction Costs in Cornwall to Gauge Uptake

BTOpenreach has posted a small, but potentially important, change concerning the Excess Construction Charges (ECC) for their single biggest deployment (62,000 premises passed) of ultrafast 330Mbps capable Fibre-the-the-Premises (FTTP) technology in rural parts of Cornwall (England).

Generally speaking Openreach’s Excess Construction Charges 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“, which can sometimes add up to several thousand pounds extra to the installation cost of a new service.

Most of the operator’s native FTTP deployments should be deliverable through a normal and fairly small setup fee, but there are still occasions where the service can only be delivered to a property through the use of ECCs and this is where Openreach’s latest offer might help.

At present Openreach contributes some £1,000 (Exemption Threshold Rate) towards the ECCs, but for a limited 12 month period (20th April 2015 to 19th April 2016) they’ve announced that this ETR will be increased within the Cornwall area to £2,500 in order to help them “gain insight into the GEA FTTP costs, build exceptions and take up for GEA FTTP in a predominantly rural area“.

During the Special Offer period Openreach said they will “monitor the frequency of ECCs raised in the area in comparison with rest of the UK, along with cancellation and completion rates to examine the overall impact.”

It’s important not to confuse this with Openreach’s Fibre on Demand (FoD) based FTTP solution, which allowed people with an FTTC capable line to upgrade to FTTP, but only if they also agreed to pay a significant charge to help cover the physical cost of building the new line. However FoD, which in some situations could also become subject to ECCs (beyond the already expensive primary construction charges), was suspended earlier this year via a “stop sell” notice (here).