Openreach Tweak Stop Sell Rules in Copper to Fibre Switch Areas

Openreach (BT) are making some tweaks to the “stop sell” rules in UK exchange areas that pass the 75% coverage milestone for their new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network, which is the point at which the migration from older copper to fibre services can be triggered. The change adds some flexibility for FTTC lines.

As above, the process for moving from copper to fibre (see progress so far) begins once 75% of premises in an exchange are able to receive that full fibre connectivity. The target for this is often c.24 months after the fibre roll-out starts, while the copper switch-off might then occur c.3 years after that (consumer migration is a slow process). The pace of this progress may vary from place to place, as some areas have better coverage than others and ISPs are at different stages of readiness.

The migration process itself usually starts with a “no move back” policy for premises connected with FTTP (i.e. no going back to copper), followed by a “stop-sell” of copper services to new customers (12-months’ notice is usually given before this starts) and ultimately full withdrawal.

However, BT Group’s recent decision to raise their £15bn FTTP coverage target to 25 million UK premises by December 2026 (here and here) has also prompted a review of Openreach’s stop sell policy for exchanges that reach the 75% coverage target.

What’s Changing?

The stop sell policy is being amended to allow end customers that already have an active Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) or SOGEA (FTTC broadband-only) service to change ISP and remain on the 40Mbps (10Mbps upload) FTTC or similar SOGEA service.

In addition, end customers that already have an active FTTC or SOGEA service will be able to bandwidth modify to a 40/10 FTTC or SOGEA service. Previously, both scenarios were restricted under stop sell policy rules.

The idea is that, by allowing consumers to continue to have access to FTTC on the slower tier, Openreach and ISPs will be able to focus their service effort and resources on customers who are looking to upgrade their speeds and reliability. This will also help ISPs that aren’t yet at the stage of being able to mass migrate customers to FTTP in these exchanges, which is a tricky process to do in bulk and can run into problems.

An Openreach Spokesperson said:

“Having upped our Ultrafast Full Fibre target to 25m, we’re keen to focus our service and resources on upgrading customers to Ultrafast speeds – so we’re making some small changes to our stop-sell policy.

Under the changes, customers in an active stop-sell exchange area who are already on a basic 40Mbps ‘Superfast’ (FTTC) service will be able to switch provider without having to migrate to our Full Fibre (FTTP) network. Existing FTTC customers will also be able to change to a basic 40Mbps service without being forced to migrate onto Full Fibre.

Having consulted our Communications Provider (CP) customers, we believe they’ll welcome these changes. It means they’ll continue to have access to the regulated ‘anchor’ 40/10 FTTC product where an FTTC line has been installed and it means they can continue to compete for customers with cheaper ‘superfast’ products, at a time when many are preparing to migrate more customers to our new digital Full Fibre network.”

The change will take effect from 18th September 2021 and will apply from that date to exchanges already under the stop sell policy, as well as on a go forward basis to exchanges where stop sell is implemented.

Openreach are making some changes to their stop sell systems and processes to facilitate this change, but these changes will not require mandatory ISP consumption and will enable providers to place orders for the scenarios described above once stop sell is implemented.

However, we can’t help but wonder whether this may push the final withdrawal of copper services in each exchange area back a bit, since FTTC services will end up being retained for a bit longer. But Openreach is of the view that it won’t, at least not significantly, because few people would wish to downgrade in order to stay on copper (they hope) and the option to upgrade to FTTP will still be there for when they’re ready.