BT Openreach Extend 330Mbps FTTP Construction Discount in Cornwall

BTOpenreach has announced that homes and businesses in Cornwall (England), specifically those that order a 330Mbps capable ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband connection, will continue to benefit from a sizeable discount on Excess Construction Charges (ECC).

At present Cornwall is somewhat unique for a UK county because the wider Superfast Cornwall project, which was jointly funded by £78.5m from BT and up to £53.5m from Europe (ERDF), has already deployed Openreach’s pure fibre optic FTTP technology to cover a whopping 85,000 premises; dramatically more than any other county in the UK.

Most of the time those who order this service will only need to pay a small activation / installation fee, but every once in a while a situation may arise that attracts Excess Construction Charges to help 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.”

In some cases ECC’s can end up costing several thousand pounds extra, which would obviously discourage new connections. Previously Openreach would contribute £1,000 (Exemption Threshold Rate) towards the ECCs, but last year they raised this to £2,500 for premises in Cornwall 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“.

The original ETR discount was due to end on 19th April 2016, but Openreach has just confirmed that this will now be extended for another year until 30th March 2017 in order to “gain further insight into the GEA FTTP costs and build exceptions based on the continuing FTTP build improvement plans we have put in place.”

Openreach have recently been conducting a number of FTTP trials (here and here), several of which have been experimenting with new approaches to deployment that could cut both the time and cost needed in order connect end users.

Admittedly there’s still a distinct lack of domestic focused FTTP ISP choice on Openreach’s network, which often leaves BT’s own consumer division as the most affordable service. Mind you Zen Internet also have some now fairly affordable, if more business focused, FTTP packages (here) and a few other ISPs also do similar solutions (AAISP, Claranet SOHO etc.).

Going forward we expect to see a lot more FTTP connectivity coming from Openreach, particularly in light of this week’s announcement (here).