BT Openreach to Begin Phase 2 Trial of SOGEA Standalone FTTC Broadband

Openreach (BT) has announced that their Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA) product, which aims to give consumers a truly standalone (naked) FTTC / VDSL “Fibre Broadband” line without the voice (phone) service, will enter Phase 2 of its trial with UK ISPs from 2nd March 2017.

The Phase 2 CP trial (testing modified orders, fault handling and reverse migrations to other platforms etc.), which will run until 17th July 2017, is the final step before Openreach moves into their larger scale pre-commercial pilot (more details here and here). The commercial launch itself is currently expected to begin sometime during early or mid 2018. Customers on the trial will benefit from free rental and transactions until 28th February 2018.

Openreach are also working on a G.fast variant of the same solution, which has been given the comical name of SOGfast. The first trials for that are currently planned for “late” Summer 2017, which suggests that they might potentially have it ready in time for G.fast’s commercial roll-out or very soon afterwards.

The new product is likely to be an attractive option for anybody who only needs their fixed line for broadband and in theory it should be a little bit cheaper than taking a basic line rental and broadband bundle, although you don’t save a lot by cutting out the voice component. Much will also depend upon how ISPs choose to position related products.

Some ISPs, such as AAISP, are already able to offer a similar solution but SOGEA should make it all more straightforward.