Openreach UK Hike Cost of G.fast Broadband Modems for ISPs UPDATE

Some broadband ISPs that sell packages based off the hybrid fibre G.fast “ultrafast broadband” (100Mbps+) technology may be displeased to learn that Openreach will shortly be raising the cost of supplying their own modem (CPE – Customer Premises Equipment) by 20%, which in some cases may end up being passed on to consumers.

The issue won’t affect larger provider’s like BT, which can afford to ship their packages alongside custom routers that integrate a G.fast modem. But as G.fast isn’t a particularly common service, and Openreach has long since shelved its rollout, then it’s much harder for supporting ISPs to deliver a similar product to BT. As a result, they often take the modem solution provided by Openreach instead (usually a Huawei MT992).

At present, Openreach charges UK ISPs £57.50 +vat to supply their G.fast modem, but a new pricing update reveals that this will jump to £69 from 1st December 2021. As a side note, the cost of replacing a damaged ONT (optical modem) in a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband install will also increase slightly from £29 to £31 on the same date (that change is too small to impact consumer pricing).

UPDATE 3rd Sept 2021

A spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview.co.uk: “Nobody likes price rises and we’re sorry that we’ve had to increase the cost of our Gfast modems. The increase is simply to reflect the higher costs we’re experiencing in our own supply chain, due to the global shortage of semi-conductor chips.”