Openreach Reduces 100Mbps and 1Gbps Ethernet Access Direct Prices
Openreach (BT) has published another round of price reductions for their Ethernet Access Direct (EAD) products, which primarily focuses upon the connection fees for their 100Mbps service and 1Gbps rental prices. The cuts should start from 1st October 2017, assuming Ofcom’s policy doesn’t change.
Full details of the planned changes can be found here and it’s worth noting that charges for 1Gbps services on WES, WEES and BES will also make corresponding changes from 1st October 2017. The big caveat in all this is that Openreach has warned they may “change and/or withdraw this price notification at any time” because of the uncertain state of Ofcom’s related 2016 Business Connectivity Market Review.
Readers may recall that BT challenged a key part of Ofcom’s review (i.e. its market definitions for the United Kingdom) via the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), which was aimed at tackling concerns over the proposed Dark Fibre Access (DFA) product. The CAT ruled in BT’s favour and Openreach has since cancelled next month’s planned DFA launch (here).
The successful challenge has left the foundation for Ofcom’s review in a difficult position, which could conceivably require the regulator to re-run the whole process and that may disrupt some of the review’s other changes, some of which have influenced today’s reductions.
In practice the regulator and Openreach will probably find a way to make the less contentious changes work, although some doubt will no doubt linger until Ofcom has seen the tribunal’s full reasoning and made a decision about their response.
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 Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Useful to know Mark, thanks. Do you have any further updates on the news item you posted a couple of weeks ago re: possible new Openreach FTTPoD pricing – “we understand that the proposed change would involve dropping the price of FTTPoD to match native FTTP”
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/08/openreach-bt-cancels-uk-launch-dark-fibre-access-product.html
One of my neighbours keeps pestering me for FTTPoD price reduction updates, they understandably won’t pay the current market prices but at the same time are desperate to have the service installed having seen my service in action LOL. I guess one option is to order a second FTTP connection at my address (at native FTTP prices) and then run a cat7 cable from the ONT to their router. But that would mean faffing around with burying cables across the lawn and whatnot.
Interesting thanks, is FTTP noticeably that much faster? What are your ping times?
Compared to 80/20 vdsl2 (full sync), web browsing speed on FTTP isn’t that much more noticeable. However file download speeds have increased from ~ 9 MB/s to ~ 40 MB/s. Ping times have improved by a piddly 3ms ( now getting around 19 ms on FTTP) but that’s largely down to my location – North Scotland. Considered my ISPs servers are in London I’m never going to get ping times in single digits….you can’t beat the laws of physics.
How much was the install/monthly costs for FTTPoD ?
That’s very helpful thanks 🙂
With Fluidone I paid £3700 install costs (band D) & paying £300 pm on a 36 month min term after which I can switch to a cheaper native FTTP service.
Do you think it would be possible to have the lowest speed FTTP product (10Mbps?) for 36 months then swap to 330Mbps after when cheaper?
At present FTTPoD only comes in the 330/30 speed tier.
I note that the £1000 reduction on Gig EAD connection charges is still due to expire at the end of this month so I guess we are going to see a price rise on Gig Internet Leased Lines & P2P in October. If the networks and service providers don’t absorb it then it will add £28 p.m. on a 36 month Internet circuit. Shame.