ISP BT Makes UK FTTP Home Broadband Packages Even Cheaper
UK ISP BT has today launched a range of discounts for new customers, which among other things knocks their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based ultrafast and gigabit speed home broadband packages down to some of the cheapest monthly prices that they’ve ever offered. The setup fee is also now free.
As usual new customers can expect to receive an included wireless router, a 24-month contract term, unlimited data usage, Cloud storage (online backup), Virus Protect, Parental Controls, Call Protect (stops nuisance calls) when bundled with phone, the Stay Fast Guarantee (get the speeds they promise or £20 back) and free access to BT’s national network of public WiFi hotspots.
BT often run weekly special offers, which usually last until the same time next week and are rarely worth mentioning in the news (i.e. the changes aren’t big enough), although on this occasion the price drop on their full fibre packages is much more noteworthy. For example, their Full Fibre 100 (c.150Mbps) plan has fallen from £39.99 to £35.99, and it’s a similar story for the faster tiers.
Take note that BT, much like several other big providers, will currently increase the monthly price you pay each year from March 2022 by the rate of inflation (i.e. the Consumer Price Index rate, as published in January each year) plus 3.9%. The packages below are all excluding a phone service, but you can optionally add that for an additional £2 per month (previously the fee was £5).
Full Fibre Essential
Average Download of 36Mbps (1Mbps upload)Price: £25.99 a month for 24 months (£35.99 thereafter)
Fibre 1
Average Download of 50Mbps (10Mbps upload)
£50 BT Reward CardPrice: £27.99 a month for 24 months (£36.99 thereafter)
Fibre 2
Average Download of 67Mbps (20Mbps upload)
£90 BT Reward CardPrice: £29.99 a month for 24 months (£40.99 thereafter)
Full Fibre 100
Average Download of 150Mbps (30Mbps upload)Price: £35.99 a month for 24 months (£47.99 thereafter)
Full Fibre 500
Average Download of 500Mbps (73Mbps upload)Price: £45.99 a month for 24 months (£?? thereafter)
Full Fibre 900
Average Download of 900Mbps (110Mbps upload)Price: £55.99 a month for 24 months (£67.99 thereafter)
BT seems to have neglected to show a post-contract price for their Full Fibre 500 tier in the legal small print, so we haven’t been able to include that (i.e. it looks like they swapped to the 500Mbps tier from the 300Mbps one and forgot to update those details).
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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I see Cerberus have also dropped their prices – the 300/50 FTTP Pro has gone from £55+vat to just £40+vat (and includes 1 static IP).
I did start to panic when I saw the headline as I just signed up to full fibre from BT yesterday.
But got the full fibre 500 package with halo 3+ and telephone service (with unlimited calls) for £49.99 per month. So overall I got a very good deal.
I don’t understand why BT and Openreach never reduced price for Ultrafast on G.fast 160/30 and 330/50 as the pricing still expensive on G.fast than FTTP 160/30 and 330/50.
Probably because g.fast requires additional equipment in the cabinet which adds an additional cost to the service
Openreach have always and continue to charge less for 160 and 330 over FTTC / G.fast than FTTP.
£16.20 a month and £19 a month for those on FTTP, £11.60 and £15.13 a month for the same over G.fast.
Special offers will of course help, and none of those are coming on G.fast I don’t think as no-one actually wants it there. It’s a temporary product until those areas are overbuilt with FTTP.
Site doesn’t offer me 500 package, has the 300.
But the prices I get are cheaper again, £49.99 for 900 (regional offer) – I’m in N.Ireland
You’re likely on older gen FTTP, which has a limit of 300Mbit.
No i ain’t I can see the 900 package.
same here I’ve got 150, 300 & 900 no 500
I’m guessing the post-contract price for Full Fibre 500 is £57.99.
The prices I see include a “regional offer” (save £240) so Full Fibre 100 £30, Full Fibre 300 £40 & Full Fibre 900 £50.
Also worth noting TopCashback is paying £115 cashback (or £165 for Fibre 2 80/20)
Will be interesting to see if the regional offer stays and this drops to Full Fibre 100 £26, Full Fibre 300 £36 & Full Fibre 900 £46.
If the Openreach prices fall as hoped for in October then why buy at these prices now?
For example, the 900Mbps will drop by £8+VAT per month under the new prices so you would expect(hope) that BT would pass on that price drop so reducing that top speed to below £50.
Just a thought.
Everyone drops their prices and KCOM increase theirs.
About right!
Someone’s got to pay for all that sweet sweet private equity cash*
*wouldn’t be surprised to find out its pure debt
When I go to BT and click on deals (as a new customer) I not seeing any offers with prepaid cards and Fibre 2 is priced at £30.99. Other prices are as reported though. Odd.
URL used was https://www.bt.com/products/broadband/deals/
Fibre 2 is FTTC, it isn’t fibre 1 2 or 3.
“Your package
Broadband
Fibre 2
Your Fibre will start before midnight on: …”
No it won’t, its VDSL.
Yes, you actually get that email when you order it people……. :/
Sorry I missed the word FULL out by mistake. I cannot get FTTC as BT never enabled the cabinets in my area. I live in the original BT FTTP Trial area so we skipped from ADSL @3Mbps or much less to FTTP.
But the rest of the comment is correct and I have just checked that URL again. Full Fibre 2 is priced at £30.99 and there is no offer for prepaid mastercard.
“Fibre 2 is FTTC”.
Not necessarily. Fibre 2 is available on both FTTC and FTTP.
I recently left BT Fibre 2 (80/20) on FTTP.
TalkTalk will start selling Future Fibre 900 (on both Openreach and Cityfibre FTTP) for £40/m , in the next month or two.
I’d certainly entertain £35.99 a month for 24 months, then leave (if I could actually get FTTP from BT).
Compared to Sky the standard end of term prices are shocking that BT have for example 24.99 then up to £40.99 with BT Sky is £28 up to £33 and option to add Boost at £5 for that package only diff is Sky don’t have Cloud backups but they do the data added to mobile if your a mobile customer with them. Sky for me sorry. After all it’s the same lines at end of day and same exchange connected to.
The only plus from these obnoxious end of term price hikes is that maybe just maybe customers will switch to another provider , losing BT the revenue stream. Eventually maybe they will realise its a good idea to keep your existing customers.
Thing is Gary, people generally don’t and these companies exploit that. The issue is there is so little competition and effort to improve it from BT actually putting FTTP in Virgin cabled areas that folks end up with the best they can afford.
For example I’m sitting pretty on Virgin 100mb for £24 a month currently, but in 18 months I’ll be having to make do with crap 4G again for another 2 year no doubt, because I’m simply not prepared to be ripped off paying double for the same service and BT FTTP isn’t available.
Ah thanks Lugz now things make more sense.
Because Openreach aren’t building FTTP to you in your opinion they are either not building to anything other than new builds or are avoiding Virgin Media areas.
They’re actually doing neither – Virgin Media areas have a better business case than those without, however if they were to just focus on those to the exclusion of everything else they’d have people like Mr Newton complaining about the digital divide and the government being upset by their not increasing the availability of gigabit significantly – they cover all the VM areas they won’t be adding much coverage by 2025.
You remarked elsewhere about how important facts are, so there are some. The VM and Openreach FTTP areas overlap a fair bit and basically politics and other things are why they don’t overlap more.
I’ll have no options for the foreseeable other than Openreach – 200m away they’ll have VM FTTP, Openreach FTTP and CityFibre in the next couple of years.
I got a few observation and looking forward different views.
Recently HeyBroadband has deployed in my are and what does surprise me is that I feel people in general are not that bothered about Full Fiber connection. Conversation with neighbors has resulted in “nahhh i keep sky (while sky runs over copper line and provides poor service) because it is now 20 pounds cheaper then it was before (mind you that i was told by the same person that his bill had gone up several time last few months).
Q: How come most ppl just don’t negotiate a better deal, threaten to leave and get a decent discount and shorter contract.
Q: Is that because of the TV? Given that we have so much to choose from, does it matter? In fact you can stream with Netflix, Amazon etc, most content is just there for consumption?
Q: Lastly, about BT, why is it that they don’t provide same upload speed as download speed? Surely if it is fiber it should be no issue to support something like that?
On the last question, GPON isn’t symmetric, its 2.4Gbps down and 1.2Gbps up. Cityfibre and others have low enough utilisation that they can offer download and upload at similar speeds (calling it symmetric isn’t really correct though). Though not wanting to undermine the leased line business will also be a big reason.
The same people believe their Sky signal comes in via their dish no doubt….
@Essa:
“Q: How come most ppl just don’t negotiate a better deal, threaten to leave and get a decent discount and shorter contract.
Q: Is that because of the TV? Given that we have so much to choose from, does it matter? In fact you can stream with Netflix, Amazon etc, most content is just there for consumption?”
If you subscribe to TV from BT (and TalkTalk and Virgin Media) you have to take that operator’s broadband as well. However Sky TV customers can use anyone else’s broadband so long as it’s fast enough for their requirements, e.g. reliable 4K streaming would proably require at least 30Mbps download.
@Essa: As regards symmetric fibre: This would require XGS-PON instead of the current GPON. Openreach started trialling XGS-PON a year ago. Other network builders are already using it.
Of course, even with GPON it would be possible to offer lower bandwidth symmetric packages such as 50/50 or 100/100.
As you know, the availability of fibre broadband in the UK is like a postcode lottery, this country is 10 years behind of where it should be by now.
Still can’t my vodafone gigafast 900/900 for £37 per month:. Dreading renewing as it appears to have increased loads
Well don’t then. Tell them it remains the same or you leave.
I thought BT was going to re introduce 12 month contracts?
I have the same as their Fibre 2 with Sky for £18 a month including phone, so they are still much more expensive than the competition
BT are told what they can charge by OFCOM.
Sky are free to charge whatever they want so can easily undercut BT. If BT tries to undercut the likes of Sky etc then they all complain to OFCOM and then the courts saying its unfair as BT are bigger than them and bullying them.
It is not a level playing field.
Nobody tells BT they have to have a minimum 24 month term on their contracts that constantly puts anyone like me in an ADSL2+ or FTTP only area off upgrading because if you merge with another household or move to a canal boat 4 months in to your 2 years contract they will try to hit you with £1,000 of exit charges. Of course if you correspond with the via the ceoemail.com address suggesting its an Unfair Contract Term but most people don’t do so and either pay up or don’t leave BT because doing so will cost them too much.
It is a disgrace that Ofcom doesn’t cap off maximum terms on fixed line broadband at 2 years and an even bigger disgrace BT can impose the 2 year requirement when FTTP cabling is already fully connected to the premises from a previous occupier.
@Julian
The vast majority of ISPs offer 24 month contracts – TalkTalk, Sky etc. It is not only BT. And where ISPs offer shorter term contracts, they will all increase the costs to you to make up for it.
And on Openreach FTTP you don’t have to use BT if you don’t want to. Other companies are free to offer FTTP on Openreach. Like TalkTalk, Zen, Sky to name just 3.
@Julian
If you enter a contract then it is only reasonable that you honour it. All ISPs will charge if you break the contract early. It is in every broadband contract’s Terms & Conditions which of course you read when you signed up.
It isn’t BT’s fault that you change your mind and want to run away from your responsibilities.
The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999
> It is a disgrace that Ofcom doesn’t cap off maximum terms on fixed line broadband at 2 years
It does. See GC C1.4:
“ Regulated Providers shall not include a term in any contract with a Consumer for the provision of Electronic Communications Services that stipulates a Fixed Commitment Period of more than 24 months in duration.”
I am on a 3 yr BT 900/100 contract – it was te onky way to get that top tier speed when I joijed up. Am I tied until the end of the three years then?
Anybody managed to get an In Contract upgrade to Full Fibre 500 from 100 or 300 for 45.99/Month I gave it a try and BT said existing customer 64.99. I get it, I am in contract, but it does seem a little unfair. My current tariff is 39.95 so they would at least make something. Hey Ho the joys of BT
Anyway of knowing what region the regional offers are on for? Trying to upgrade my current fibre contract to fibre 100 as its a good price at the moment, says its available when I enter my postcode then has nothing for me to select when I go through to the choose a package page. When I say nothing I mean no packages available at all and I’m in a full fibre area so am at a bit of a loss.
1. So why didn’t they quote such a price 18-24 months ago for their FTTP packages? If they can make a profit at the £57 price point for 900Mbps, yet were quoting prices close to £80 before.
2. Even at this price, it is still more expensive than other providers using their own Fibre (such as Cityfibre ISPs or TalkTalk)?
3. If the Openreach wholesale price is going down in September/October, are BT trying to lock people in before another price drop?
4. How many large ISPs like BT are offering FTTP via Openreach? It’s been a while now. Are the likes of Sky, Vodafone etc offering?
5. Surely BT has missed a massive opportunity to lock in customers with an excellent Fibre service. Penny wise, pound foolish by fleecing people with VDSL at exorbitant prices and then demanding an insane price for real Fibre and then wondering why there’s no take up.
6. The figures for uptake of Openreach FTTP would be much lower than if there were ISPs offering the service at a reasonable price. Places like Portugal and South Korea are cheaper than this are they not? And surely Openreach (and BT as an ISP) have better economies of scale that can work to provide a cheaper service than the likes of TalkTalk??