SSE Drops ADSL to Focus on Cheaper FTTC Broadband Plans
Energy provider and UK ISP SSE has today become the latest provider to drop their older copper ADSL broadband packages, while at the same time they’ve made their two “unlimited fibre” (FTTC) and phone bundles a little bit cheaper for new customers – just in time for the Black Friday sales event.
As usual new customers can expect to receive an unlimited usage allowance, a free wireless router, phone line rental (standard call rates) and the ISP promises “zero price hikes” during their initial 18 month minimum contract term. On top of that there’s a 60 day “Happiness Guarantee” (i.e. you can leave penalty free if not satisfied) and no upfront fees (unless you need a new line installed, which carries a £60 one-off charge).
We note that free UK Evening & Weekend calls via fixed line or mobile can be added for an extra £4 per month or £8 for Anytime calls and £12 for Anytime Plus (adds international calls to landlines in 35 countries). Finally, existing SSE Energy customers can benefit from a sizeable discount on their broadband packages, which knocks £9 off the standard monthly prices (e.g. Unlimited Fibre becomes just £13).
Unlimited Fibre
* Download speeds average 35Mbps
PRICE: £22 per month
Unlimited Fibre Plus
* Download speeds average 63Mbps
PRICE: £26 per month
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 and Linkedin.
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A further reduction in choice for those stuck with only adsl
The joys of the free market.
Indeed, around 20% of premises here in West Devon have no other choice.
I expect it will soon end up with BT (or their Plusnet brand) as the only ADSL ISP for those of us in areas where ADSL is the only choice of fixed-line broadband. The future migration path will be (EE) 4G under USO.
@AnotherTim
It will be interesting to see what can and can’t be done with USO funding, personally I will be rejecting any 4G based offer and pressing for FTTP. I’ve already got all the NGA data and quotes that prove it could be installed here within the USO funding limits.
@Guy, good luck. All the evidence I have for my area shows FTTP would cost a lot more than the USO limit.
Of course, we are due to have Gigaclear FTTP (in 2018), so we may not need USO. I expect to be using 4G for some time…
@Occasionally Factual
Free market? OFCOM wants a word.
@Mike
OFCOM only stops BT doing want it wants. The others get away with “murder”.
Like Virgin has 50% market penetration but is not a significant player? That is bull droppings. In any other industry Virgin would be as tightly regulated as BT is.
And all the other players can cherry pick any market without any come back from OFCOM. Like this news from SSE (among others that recently have decided to drop ADSL).
@Occasionally Factual
I agree with you.
Actually I suspect that VM also agree themselves hence why they are looking at wholesaling before they are forced to.
If they do it before they are pushed and do a reasonable job of it then OFCOM won’t want to get a big arguments started particularly if they are rolling out plenty of FTTP – as they are with Project Lightening.
I do suspect that they will split off their fully FTTP offerings so they can offer symmetrical under (an)other branding(s) / wholesale offerings. The fully FTTP bits should be able to cope with this pretty easily.
Interesting to see how this develops / drives investment in the network.
Where I live is in the middle of a large housing estate currently is fed by 3 separate openreach owned street cabinets the 2 cabinets either side of my particular one are both FFTC however my street cabinet is still only asdl at around 5mbs having had both BT and Plusnet in the past. BT came out in the past and fitted a new face plate to my nte5 and renewed the damaged underground copper cables feeding my DP (distribution point) in an attempt to speed up my line my ex work colleague in the next street gets only 2mbs of the same cabinet fortunately the estate is also Virgin Media enabled and I currently get 110mbs EE only works out doors am currently with O2 25 to 30mbs indoors so when I read about 5g and FTTP I tend to smile to myself and when I read about ISPs stopping asdl I feel as I am being driven towards only one provider and given no choice and I’m not even living rural.
Hardly 1 choice, You have a very fast EE option which you should be able to gave ‘indoors’ with either a dedicated 4g external device or with an external antenna, you have O2 and seem to have completely ignored Virgin media.
Wow, I’d love to have the limited choice that you have. Virgin, EE, and O2 all with much better bandwidth than I can get.
Virgin Media enabled – you have nothing to complain about.
This post does not provide enough information and is incorrect in the title. SSE do still offer ADSL Broadband… But this is only offered in areas where FTTC is not available.
If you can get FTTC they will only provide FTTC. But they can still provide the ADSL if your unable to get ADSL.