Openreach has started an unexpected third UK ISP trial of their long in the making Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA) product, which will allow consumers to buy a standalone “fibre broadband” (FTTC VDSL2 or G.fast) line without the voice (phone) service.
Back in October we noted that the Phase 2 trial of SOGEA had been extended until the end of December 2017, which we understood was partly because some ISPs still needed more time for testing and preparation. At the time BTWholesale said that SOGEA development was “nearing completion“, with availability expected to “grow very quickly when launched” and a pilot would then run from January to March 2018 before the commercial launch.
However Openreach has announced that SOGEA will now get a phase 3 trial from January 2018 (not a pre-commercial pilot) that will also combine both of their hybrid Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) broadband products – ‘up to’ 80Mbps VDSL2 and ‘up to’ 330Mbps G.fast – into the same phase. As a result the trial lines will remain free of rental and connection charges for orders placed up to and including 30th May 2018 (they will then stay free until 30th December 2018).
The implication of this is that the final pilot and commercial launch will probably be pushed back by several months (note: the expected length of Openreach’s future pilot is 3 months), which would probably result in a commercial launch during H2 2018 or later, depending upon progress.
The SOGEA product is an important one for Openreach based ISPs because it represents a very different approach to broadband provision from what we’ve seen before. Previously consumers had to buy their phone service alongside line rental and then “fibre broadband” (VDSL2 / G.fast) was added on top as an optional service. However these days more people are buying bundles and few people used their fixed line for making calls.
By comparison SOGEA reverses this and means that it will be possible to buy a standalone broadband connection without the phone service, although you will be able to add the voice feature as an optional add-on. In theory this could produce a cost saving for those who don’t take the phone component but in practice any savings would be very small (most of the cost is still in the core line rental and broadband).
The service also introduces a new front plate for the latest NTE5C Master Socket, which where necessary is designed to prevent analogue voice being reinjected onto Openreach’s network from the end users premises (see SOGEA’s technical details). All of this will help to support a future direction where voice calling is largely handled by VoIP rather than analogue phones (note: we expect to see some ISPs supplying related routers with phone ports).
At least one ISP (e.g. AAISP) has cleverly managed to hack together a similar sort of product solution where you can buy a line without the analogue voice calls component (i.e. used just for broadband), although Openreach’s SOGEA is designed to represent the correct approach.
UPDATE 9th Jan 2018
The new time-scale for SOGFast has been confirmed by the OTA2 and they also give some extra context. “Openreach announced that insufficient progress had been made on testing all SOGFast scenarios. In view of this, Openreach are introducing a new phase – CP3 and extending the pilot phase to give CPs additional time to provide the scenarios needed,” said the OTA2.
The revised dates are as follows:
CP2 trial will still complete at end of December 2017
CP3 trial (new phase) will run from January 2018 until 30 May 2018
Pilot will run from 31 May 2018 until 30 September 2018
Early Market Deployment from 1 October 2018
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