London Full Fibre ISP G.Network Launch Cheaper Social Tariff
Gigabit-broadband builder G.Network, which is busy investing £1bn to deploy a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across London and beyond (here), has today become the latest in a small group of UK ISPs to launch a cheaper social tariff (‘Essential Fibre‘) that is aimed at “Londoners on lower incomes“.
The Government and Ofcom have spent the past couple of years encouraging more UK ISPs to proactively introduce or upgrade and promote low-cost social tariffs, which are usually aimed at those in the most disadvantaged groups (i.e. low income, unemployed etc.), who may struggle with paying their bills.
At the same time, the UK telecoms regulator has also warned of further action if internet providers fail to put more effort into tackling this issue, which they said could include the potential introduction of an industry-wide regulated social tariff.
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In response, BT has already improved their existing social broadband tariff (Home Essentials) and they’ve also been joined by new or enhanced tariffs from several other ISPs, including Virgin Media (Essential Broadband), Hyperoptic (Fair Fibre Plans) and KCOM (Flex).
The good news is that we can today add one more ISP to that list after G.Network launched their Essential Fibre package for Londoners on lower incomes. The new tariff costs just £15 per month, for which customers receive an unlimited 50Mbps download speed and 15Mbps upload on a 1-year contract, with a free connection and included router.
Sasho Veselinski, G.Network CEO, said:
“With the cost of living at the forefront of many Londoners’ minds, Essential Fibre will help thousands of people afford better full fibre broadband. We want to help reduce London’s digital divide, and we believe Essential Fibre will be a useful contribution to this.”
G.Network will make Essential Fibre available to Londoners who are receiving certain levels of Income Support, Jobseekers’ Allowance, Pension Credit, Employment and Support Allowance and Universal Credit. As part of this the ISP will carry out a simple annual eligibility check with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Customers who no longer need to be on Essential Fibre will be offered a migration to one of their existing tariffs. For £22 per month, residents can get 150Mbps download and 50Mbps upload.
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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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This feels like the equivalent of poor doors on social housing mixed occupancy buildings but for broadband. I don’t want an ISP to know if my earnings qualify me for this tariff. Plus what about the squeezed low income earners who scrape by without qualifying for benefit payments? Surely a much better way forward is for ISPs to have an entry level package for anyone who chooses to accept lower speeds for lower costs?
Most ISPs already have an entry level package with slower speeds at a lower cost, but the provider still has to make a profit on those – even if a smaller one. By comparison, the social tariffs are done at around cost price, and it would often not be financially viable to make such tiers available to everybody.
G Network dug up our road (closing the road for almost a month) nearly 9 months ago. They still haven’t made any services available despite telling me when I called that we would be live by Sept 2021. Now another ISP is digging it up again and the road is closed once more – forcing everyone to move their cars away again even though we still don’t have a fibre service. We’re in EC1 so surely it should be simpler than this!