A Quick Price Comparison of G.fast Ultrafast Broadband ISP Packages

Several UK ISPs have now launched packages based off the new 160Mbps and 330Mbps capable hybrid fibre G.fast “ultrafast broadband” technology from Openreach (BT), which means that it’s time for us to take a closer look at what you can get for your precious pounds.

The G.fast (ITU G.9700/9701) technology works in a similar way to existing Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) based services. In this setup a fibre optic cable is run from the exchange to your local PCP Street Cabinet. The cabinet is then fitted with an extension “pod” to house the new G.fast line cards and after that the service reaches your home via existing copper cable.

Originally Openreach had intended to deploy this service to cover 10 million UK homes and businesses by the end of 2020, but last year this plan was scaled-back to c.5.7 million premises (here) as part of work to put a greater focus on “full fibre” (FTTP) technology. At the last count they had covered 1,708,000 premises and rising (here). The increased focus on FTTP now leads us to suspect that they might not even hit 5.7m (here).

Suffice to say that G.fast is still in an early roll-out phase and as a result few ISPs are putting much money toward advertising it. Nevertheless we have now seen packages surface from BT, EE, TalkTalk, Zen Internet, Freeola, Cerberus Networks, uno, iDNET, Giganet and a few others. Meanwhile Sky Broadband, Plusnet and so forth still seem to be waiting.

Caveats of the Comparison

In an attempt to simplify our comparison we’re only going to compare residential ISPs (prices include VAT) that bundle an unlimited G.fast service with copper phone line rental. On top of that we’ll just be looking at the prices for the cheapest G.fast 160/30 tier, which is more widely available and generally offers a maximum of 160Mbps download (c.140-145Mbps average) and 30Mbps upload (c.25-29Mbps average).

Other Key Points

* Customers that need a new line installed may face an extra charge of between £0 and £120, which has not been included into our totals since most consumers will be migrating via an already active line and such charges are not unique to G.fast.

* We haven’t factored vouchers (e.g. pre-paid Mastercards or store cards) into the total costs because they’re very hard to compare and can change dramatically on an often weekly basis, but we do mention them.

* The prices we use are assumed to be the cheapest. As a result no extra charges for Paper Billing have been included and we’ve adopted the assumption that people will pay by Direct Debit. Different payment methods may sometimes attract a small additional charge.

* We’ve chosen not to include any packages if they also required the customer to take a third primary service (e.g. TV or Mobile) because that wouldn’t be fair to the other providers. We’re not examining triple or quad-play bundles.

The Comparison

A lot of ISPs tend to discount their prices for the first 12 to 18 months of service and as a result we’ll show a total cost for 2 years. After that we’ll also highlight the post-contract (year 3) price in order to reveal the impact of being a longer term customer (discounts don’t usually extend to year 3), although you should assume that the year 3 price will rise beyond our stated figures due to future price hikes (usually c.+4-6% per annum).

The following data is based on the publicly available information provided via each providers website during early February 2019. We attempted to uncover all of the relevant mandatory charges, but do let us know if we’ve missed anything. Any discounts applied are detailed underneath the tables.

Overall TalkTalk are the clear winner for price and at £40 per month they seem to be focused on rapid growth, which doesn’t leave a lot of margin for investing in future network or service improvements. At present if you were to re-contract at the end of your term then the price should be the same but the ISP may change that in the future (we couldn’t see a higher post-contract price listed anywhere).

Interestingly the next cheapest ISP, iDNET, also happens to be one of the best quality providers but the obvious caveat here is that you don’t benefit from an included router. However Openreach’s engineer installation does include a G.fast modem, which can be plugged into an existing router, so you could grab a mid-range router and still be saving.

Otherwise most of the early packages tend to follow a similar level of pricing and that’s largely because there isn’t a lot of flexibility in Openreach’s current G.fast wholesale model. Equally our comparison is simplistic and doesn’t reflect the other differences, such as any extras on BT’s packages (public WiFi etc.) or the Static IPs included by Zen. Placing a value on extras is tricky and somewhat subject to personal preference.

The biggest difficulty with G.fast though is that you’ll only get the best speeds when living within around a couple of hundred metres from your local PCP cabinet, which tends to hinder its availability and performance. The same problem also makes G.fast much more susceptible to any problems you may have with poor home wiring.

As ever this is a new service and we’d expect more ISPs to join the fray as availability improves. Just remember that price isn’t the only consideration and some ISPs may offer better service quality (e.g. iDNET and Zen Internet,) than others (e.g. BT and TalkTalk).