ISP 1310 Cuts UK Broadband Prices and Updates on FTTP Build

UK ISP 1310 (“thirteen-ten“), which offers gigabit broadband services via Openreach’s national network and is also building their own full fibre (FTTP) across parts of Hampshire in England, has recently reduced the standard pricing across their packages and issued a progress update on their fibre rollout.

Firstly, in terms of 1310’s work to build their own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network (here), the operator says they’ve now reached a total of around 6,000 premises passed. The deployment itself started last year in the South Farnborough and North Camp areas of Hampshire, but since then they’ve also covered the town of Rothwell and the Longacre area of Basingstoke.

The provider is now about to begin work north of Basingstoke – from the village of Ramsdell East to the village of Sherborne St. John. Like most alternative networks (AltNets), 1310 harnesses Openreach’s existing ducts and poles (Physical Infrastructure Access) to run their own GPON style fibre optic cable (cutting deployment costs by reducing the need for local street works etc.).

However, unlike a lot of multi-network providers, 1310 adopts a policy of pricing parity across their Openreach on-net (i.e. unbundled exchanges), Nationwide Wholesale (not unbundled) and their own build fibre network (i.e. they almost all have the same price to help keep things simple for consumers).

The exception is their 100Mbps package, which is more expensive for those on exchanges that have not been unbundled to their control (1310 has unbundled exchanges in Farnborough, Basingstoke and Monk Sherborne).

1310’s New Package Prices

All contract terms are for 24 months. There are no connection charges or router charges, just the monthly cost.

100Mb (20Mbps up) – £29.99/m (own fibre and on-net GEA)
100Mb (20Mbps up) – £37.99/m (national wholesale)
300Mb (48Mbps up) – £42.00/m
550Mb (70Mbps up) – £48.00/m
900Mb (100Mbps up) – £55.00/m

All inc. VAT.

Just for a quick comparison. New customers were previously charged £46.20 for their 100Mbps package and £86.40 for 500Mbps, plus a one-off £50-£60 connection charge. Suffice to say, the new pricing is significantly more competitive with the rest of the market, where prices have recently been falling.

As a side note, the ISP has also completely stopped selling hybrid fibre FTTC (VDSL) based broadband packages outside their immediate unbundled footprint, as it’s much easier to focus on FTTP now coverage is improving. Not to mention the challenges of having to handle copper-line migration etc.