ISP BT Reintroduces 36Mbps Fibre Essentials Broadband Package
UK ISP BT has revived their entry-level 36Mbps (average speed) capable “Fibre Essential” (FTTC/P) broadband and phone package at the cheaper price point of just £26 per month for 18 months of service (£37.99 thereafter), which is also being bundled alongside their remaining stock of older HomeHub 5 routers.
The package offers free activation, although you still have to pay a one-off upfront fee of £9.99 for router delivery. As usual it also includes phone line rental, unlimited data usage, 200GB of Cloud storage (online backup), Virus Protect, Parental Controls, Call Protect (stops nuisance calls) and free access to BT’s national network of public WiFi hotspots.
A couple of caveats with this package are that you don’t get any of the discounts or gadgets being offered alongside other plans and there’s no mention of BT’s new “Stay Fast Guarantee” for broadband speed. We suspect that BT has resuscitated this tier due to the aggressive price competition from cheaper rivals.
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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 X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Is it fibre broadband or does it come down a phone line?
That record of yours must getting pretty worn out.
It’s FTTC as you well know and the argument of what it’s called and referred to as has been done to death.
BT is not the only company that refers to it as such so I must ask whether you troll ALL companies and related media and news publications comment sections or just ISPreview’s.
Same comment yet again from the official B4RN spokesperson.
Hi Christine
When do you plan on bringing B4RN to the Scottish Highlands?
Thanks
So it’s copper and not fibre when did you here anyone call a donkey a race horse.
Unfortunately the headline of this article was a bit confusing or misleading, but when you open up the articel, it then clarifies it by using the expression:
““Fibre Essential” (FTTC/P) broadband”.
So I assume in most cases it’s not fibre, but VDSL.
Fttc/fttp uses fibre.
It depends if you have the WBC FTTP product, or the VDSL product. Works on either.
@Mike your analogy is trash. Anyone who knows anything will see the headline speed of 36Mbps and know that it’s not an FTTP product. Anyone who doesn’t know that will not give two hoots about the delivery vector as long as it works.
Your average Joe Bloggs does not understand the difference between ADSL/VDSL/copper/fibre et all, nor do they care. If the product delivers what it advertises and what the customer wants then does it matter?
As a matter of interest is this an option on OR FTTP as well?
Most of the OR offerings are mirrored copper to what @CC would describe as fibre.
And indeed they need to be mirrored so that ‘enhanced’ migration is not a nightmare to administer.
What the hel I pay £27 a month with Vodafone for fastest FTTC speeds and BT want that for them low speeds, are the people at BT smoking crack
Well BT aren’t the only ones. Sky was even more cruel. I don’t have FTTC yet in E1 London area and I will never get FTTC never mind FTTP any time soon even if the Fibre checker shows upgrading to FTTC soon, well I know it will not happen as it has been that way for over 10 years. 2 years ago I was paying Sky £33 a month for up to 17 Mbps ADSL.
Most of the ISP’s punish you for customer loyalty. When I called Sky in order to switch they quickly reduced the package to £21.50 but then soon increased to £22.50 and then eventually after the 12 month contract made it £29.99. I switched to Plusnet this year for only £16 a month with £75 cashback.
I don’t mind paying money at least if I get a decent service.
Maybe BT are increasing their prices to offset the cost of FTTP, but who knows, maybe they are just trying to exploit intentionally. What they are actually doing is bad practice. No wonder so many people want to boycott BT and Openreach with their FTTC. The main reason we are in this situation is because FTTC has dragged out the deployment of FTTP in this country. Bit like what PC World are doing, exploit people using outdated Celeron CPU’s in their desktop and laptops. Just as I build my own custom PC’s and won’t allow to be ripped-off, in the same way if an altnet FTTP provider comes it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever return to an ADSL/FTTC package regardless of how cheap the package is. But obviously BT and Openreach are confident in their monopoly which is why they are abusing their powers out of the helplessness of their customers knowing they have no where to go..
For me it’s the quality of service rather than price. I left BT because of its poor customer service. I am with PlusNet now which, after a few years, are still giving me more than this Fibre Essentials package gives (exc public WiFi hotspots), great service,and at a lower cost. I believe PlusNet are owned by BT so work that one out.
Have got crap speeds for my BT business package of £54/ month
Average ADSL broadband 8mb for this money…..BT is a joke
I’m leaving broadband/land line when my contract is up….
Three do a 4G router 54mb down 15mb up for £20 / month
They are doing this due to new ofcom regulation and by putting the 36 mbs contracts back they will pick the customers that have been forced in the past months to get just the 20 mbs contracts
I myself suffer because of ofcom new rules, open reach have lowered the minimum guaranteed speed from 26 to 22 in my area. All the providers that signed ofcom new code of practice don t offer anymore the 76mbs contracts in my area. The only accessible ones are the 20 mbs contracts, even if the lines can do 40. Competition will soon create similar packs to target those that have been forced in 20mbs contracts.
Curiously, you sound unhappy that OFCOM has compelled ISPs to advertise a speed that is truer to what you can get.
Well we can all see where BT is going with this. Buy out the competition to keep the prices high.
I pay £29.99 for superfibre 2 with BT which is 53-71Mbs……
That’s £4 more.
Let’s find out if they buy out hyperoptic…
It sounds to me, BT is finally accepting the fact that they can’t delivered the much-hyped speeds over their network. Offering a slower speed connection will keep OFCOM and the ASA happy
Not really they have been offering free upgrades to the 80/20 so they have plenty of headroom in most cases.
One of the often quoted reasons for not upgrading to a Super/Ultrafast service when it is available is cost – so perhaps the creation of this product is part of the enablers for switching off ADSL?
Meanwhile sky are offering upto 76mb for £27 a month!