Openreach Hikes UK Copper Broadband and Cablelink Prices
We reported yesterday that Openreach (BT) had announced a range of price cuts for their full fibre broadband lines (here), but as part of the push toward FTTP the operator also hiked prices for copper-line broadband and phone services too (FTTC / SOGEA and G.fast etc.). Such changes will be particularly painful for those with no alternative.
In case anybody has forgotten. Ofcom’s last Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review 2021-26 (summary) saw the regulator move away from cost-based charge controls on copper line services, while Openreach also gained the ability to spread the cost of investment in full fibre across a wider group of consumers (e.g. allowing them to recover some investment costs from both copper and fibre products).
Put another way, the hikes in copper line based services are partly designed to both help fund BT’s up to £15bn investment in rolling out Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) to over 80% of the UK by the end of 2026 and to nudge consumers to upgrade. But as we said in the opening paragraph, this does have the tendency to penalise the many consumers who, at present, still have no other option than to take a copper line based service.
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The latest increases thus continue a trend that started a year ago and, to be frank, there are far too many changes to list them all. But what we can do is summarise some of the biggest and most relevant tweaks, which will no doubt end up being passed on to consumers as part of annual price hikes from broadband ISPs and phone providers. Most of these changes will be formally introduced from 1st April 2023.
For example, the one-off cost of supplying a basic new line (WLR) is soon to be £59.25 +vat (up from £47.40), while Basic Line Rental will reach £116.04 per year (up from £104.40) and the annual rental cost for a 40Mbps (10Mbps upload) GEA hybrid fibre FTTC (VDSL2) broadband service jumps to £69.91 (up from £62.93). Most one-off installation charges have also risen by around £5-£10.
The price of fully unbundled (MPF) copper lines, such as those sold by TalkTalk, Vodafone and Sky Broadband, will also see annual rentals rise to £104.76 (up from £94.68). The story is similar for Openreach’s SOGEA standalone-broadband (no voice service) products too. For example, a 40Mbps (10Mbps) tier will now cost £169.44 per year (up from £152.51) and the top G.fast 330Mbps (50Mbps) tier rises to £309.48 (up from £278.64).
The cost of supplying these broadband services with data capacity under Openreach’s Cablelink (Ethernet) solution has also increased (i.e. the connection between their fibre headend and an ISP’s equipment). The connection charge for a 1Gbps Cablelink is now £607.36 (up from £546.68) and for 10Gbps it’s £1,214.71 (up from £1,093.35).
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Suffice to say, every Openreach-based ISP and many consumers are going to feel the impact from all this, and it’ll hurt. But the operator is ultimately only doing what Ofcom has allowed them to, and the regulator itself remains adamant that Openreach deserves the chance to make a “fair return” on their huge FTTP investment. On the flip side, their FTTP products are getting cheaper in real-terms and via new discounts (here).
However, such big increases do pose risks for Openreach too, not least of which is the fact that they could also encourage consumers in some areas to move away to rival FTTP networks, which would be counter-productive to their goals.
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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Given that (at least) FTTC 40/10 prices are regulated, presumably these changes are just the CPI-linked increases in the long-term formula already agreed by OFCOM?
Much of Openreach’s costs are personnel, and they’ve just offered a big pay settlement to the CWU: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/11/bt-proposes-new-pay-offer-to-cwu-to-stop-future-uk-strikes.html
I’d say applying these rises is perfectly reasonable. Many retail ISPs *already* apply much higher rises mid-contract. Eventually of course, we might some rises in the start-of-contract prices, but the market remains fiercely competitive. There is much more margin on higher bandwidth services, so expect a strong push on consumers to trade up.
Equinox is the carrot to get CPs moving people over to FTTP, this is the stick. It also reflects the increasing expense per customer of running the copper platform. Each customer moving to full fibre is one less sharing the largely fixed legacy network costs.
FTTC is still cheaper than FTTP for now, though. This might change in the future.
Equinox is the carrot to get CPs moving people over to FTTP, this is the stick. It also reflects the increasing expense per customer of running the copper platform. Each customer moving to full fibre is one less sharing the largely fixed legacy network costs.
FTTC is still cheaper than FTTP for now, though. This might change in the future.
I knew this would happen, I did not think it would happen this quickly, but then what do you expect when you still have a national network that still has a monopoly in some places and been built using taxpayers money.
People are not changing quickly enough, let’s make what they are using more expensive, normal for this country. But as been said in the article, it may push people onto Alt networks if they are available, but I feel for the people who have no choice.
You say FTTC is still cheaper than FTTP, I presume you mean for the consumer? I can get FTTP from plusnet slightly cheaper than what I am paying for FTTC, about 59p a month,, but the speed is the same. but I can renew my FTTC contract for another 24 months for £21.99 a month. So cheaper than Fibre.
I have just been having a look at what I can get and according to plusnet FTTC, 36mb/s, if I renew for 12 months I pay £22.99, 24 months as I said above £21.99, but 18 months is £24 a month, so cheaper to go for 12 months than 18 months. Very strange.
My main issue with all the FTTP packages is the 24 month contract.
You say it may change in the future, there is no may about it, certainly for people who can get FTTP. Where i live only part of the city is covered by FTTP at the moment, by both Openreach and Zzoomm, it seems like Openreach is following Zzoomm, they had no interest before Zzoomm came.
If I really have to change, while I don’t relish spending £33 a month on something I don’t really need, I think I would look at Zzoomm. I have decided to wait until closer to the end of my contract in June before deciding what I am doing
‘People are not changing quickly enough, let’s make what they are using more expensive, normal for this country.’
Normal for every country apart from those that have already switched copper off and forced customers to FTTP or mobile. The increases are presumably Ofcom-approved and if they drive people to altnets that’s a good thing.
How many countries have switched copper off? We were pretty late to broadband compared to many countries from what I remember, so we are behind many countries anyway. The only reason Openreach wants us to go to fibre is to save them money.
OFCOM is waste of time normally back BT, makes me wonder why OfCOM exist, but then I feel the same way about all these regulators
For those customers stuck on copper because of no other choice (and that is not a small number) this will be painful as the cost passed on by their ISP.
So for many people, they won’t give a stuff about BT’s overall plan of getting off copper simply because they are on BT’s legacy kit and BT / Openreach have failed to offer superior FTTP, and in a lot of areas not until 2026 and many not even got a start date yet, and this is for towns not just rural highlands.
This is good old dinosaur BT at work again. FTTP was usually more expensive, so close the gap and make FTTC just as expensive so people no longer have access to the cheapest. The BT fanboys will disagree though.
Are they permitted by regulation to charge different rates for copper based on whether their own FTTP service is available?
“This is good old dinosaur BT at work again. FTTP was usually more expensive, so close the gap and make FTTC just as expensive so people no longer have access to the cheapest. The BT fanboys will disagree though.”
As a self confessed BT fanboy, in my opinion the average consumer wont even notice these rises. As an FTTC customer myself, I was expecting my bill to go up to around £25 a month from next April anyway, so if anything Plusnet will just see a reduced profit from the CPI+3.9% increase in my bill.
What this may do is nullify the increase in CP profit margins, for mid contract FTTC customers, due from the CPI+3.9% price increases, so I expect the CP’s will take a small hit from this, but not so much the consumer. Since the CP’s need to attract as many customers as possible, to offset their other costs, the increase in Openreach’s FTTC pricing isn’t significant.
Can we not be fangirls too?
And for what it’s worth I think you generalise massively. Not everyone thinks just about themselves all the time. We might not like it, but some of us understand the economics of all this for BT. I’m not massively keen on paying more for FTTC in the short term, but it’s an ok trade-off if i’m able to order a better service in the medium/long-term. And anyway, my line is pretty good for now and I’ve used it more and more over the last few years. Meanwhile my energy bill keeps going up no matter how much less I use.
Anyone who thinks BT is raking it in and too dominant needs to look at its share price performance over the last 5 years. Investors don’t like how much they’re spending on improving services.
For those with a reasonable signal, Three do 4G broadband for £10 a month.
For how many GB though? One single few hour youtube streaming at 1080p can ratch up about 20GB. And a few hour gaming on Call of Duty can ratch up 30GB. And that is just 5hrs of one day.
We Are using the 3 4G service, works really well with teenagers constantly streaming every evening, you also have the advantage that you can easily place the box in the optimal position in the house for WiFi.
The Three signal doesn’t penetrate the walls of my house so I can put the box anywhere I want, as long as it’s outside, at the front.
I’m in a rural location.
Base station is too far away for decent speed and there is way too much contention.
Aren’t you behind CGNAT with mobile operators. So you can’t run any services at home.
I said this in a different comment yesterday. If you have FTTP available at your property. You would have to be certifiably mad to stick with vDSL. This now stamps it further home. Any ISP can now say “its cheaper” when asked on the phone by old grannies why they should ever switch.
But as I have said before, FTTC works for many people and for those of us who have a pretty decent speed, there is little point in changing. If Plusnet says to me unless you change to FTTP we will increase the price of my FTTC connection by say a tenner a month then I would have to go to FTTP, but then I may say no and tell them to release me from my contract and I will try and find another provider with a decent price FTTC, if I can’t then I would go to Zzoomm, not that I would want to pay £33 a month. But going by what some have said on here, it seems like the increase in price will make little difference to me, I may pay £1 more a month if that.
I just don’t see the point in changing to FTTP to get the same thing I am getting now, I don’t really give a monkey what openreach wants.
I’m someone who doesn’t currently have access to FTTP, so I’m particularly interested in these increases.
Up until recently I was on Sky Broadband costing around £23.99 a month, and a month before my contract was due to end I was notified that my broadband bill would increase to nearly £35 a month, so I immediately started looking for other deals; I decided to go with Plusnet as they were offering an 18 month contract at £21.99 a month and they went to great lengths to go through the contract details, emphasising the CPI+3.9% price increases allowed mid contract under the deal, so I’m expecting my bill to increase to around £25 a month early next year.
If I’m reading the prices for FTTC rental correctly, with the new wholesale basic line rental at £116.04 per year and the new broadband cost £69.91, it means the wholesale cost for providing my service will go up from £13.95 a month to £15.50 a month, an increase of £1.55 a month. In my case, using the basic figures, Plusnet will have a margin of £9.50 a month for providing my service from next April. I realise there are other costs for providing service, like admin, customer service, etc and those extra costs eat into the providers margin, but those costs are spread across the many customers of the service provider, so the Openreach price increases are possibly less significant than other provider cost increases, like inflation related pay rises.
In my opinion, the price increases by Openreach aren’t that important in the overall scheme of things, since the CP’s will need to attract as many customers as possible to offset their other staff and admin related costs. Transferring to an alternative provider is possible, but that also incurs extra staff costs, with added extra costs maintaining different systems for billing, monitoring, etc.
I guess Openreach will argue that the cost of maintaining and running legacy equipment will rise going forward.
Kind of inevitable, like the demise of steam trains…
Partly their own fault they sweated copper for much longer than they actually needed to. For customers where they have no choice, and there are MANY areas with just ADSL or just FFTC way until 2026 and many not even stated for any type of FTTP provisioning, then these price rises will be a kick in the teeth.
Precisely, anonymous. It was BT/Openreach’s choice to sweat copper for decades, not ours. And these price rises are unfair on people who don’t have an FTTP alternative.
Mark describes this as a ‘fair return on investment’ for FTTP, but I have to disagree. This is literally not FTTP investment.
And yet the alternative would have been millions more people on ADSL for longer.
Disagree, Martin. The alternative perspective is that the FTTP upgrade would have started much earlier, so it’d be long done. FTTP is a huge improvement over *DSL, a much bigger jump than from ADSL2 to VDSL2.
@Iain, how do you think they’re paying for FTTP upgrades?
I don’t get why people expect OR to run as some charity to give the best speeds to everyone and their dog for a pittance. It’s a company that has shareholders to answer to.
BT has huge issues with finances (Hello pension deficit), as well as the regulator restricting pricing of things like 40/10 and PIA.
Sweating the asset is always going to happen for beancounters, regardless of industry or size of the org.
It will inevitably rise per subscriber, unless they start selling copper to many more people – perhaps migrants being put in old military bases?
I am no BT fanperson but was it really the fault of BT that they failed to invest in FTTP earlier, or a failure of regulation? I seem to remember that BT has been banging the drum on many occasions about rolling out fibre over the last mile but the government or OFTEL or OFCOM have failed to either be receptive, or were concerned that BT would wipe out competition, or that they would be unable to recoup a return on their investment within a reasonable period of time. I am sure BT is not blameless here but I am also fairly certain that others were also not to blame.
@Iainl, you say that going from FTTC to FTTP is a bigger improvement than going from ADSL to FTTC, in the technical sense, maybe. But what you have to look at is that when we had ADSL or ADSL+ a lot of us were stuck with below 5Mb/s, I could only get 3 if I was lucky, which would work ok for SD streaming bearing in mind streaming was not a big thing then, Netflix was around, and I could stream 720HD. FTTC here is around 36Mb/s, so I can stream HD and 4K, so what is the bigger improvement I would see by having a higher speed FTTP connection? There is nothing higher quality than 4K available for most people.
if I had other people living here streaming 4k at the same time, then maybe FTTp would be a huge improvement, but I don’t. I wonder how many people who have updated to say a 100Mb/s or faster FTTp connection really notice any difference, I bet very few unless their FTTC broadband was dreadful
I WFH. I could do with faster upload speed that FTTP gives.
Upload speed is needed to reduce lag in remote desktop connections plus pushing backups and deliveries to cloud storage.
Currently I use the old internet pigeon capacity approach. I get in the car with a 5Tb disk and drive 32 miles to the office and upload over the symmetrical gigabit cable. The site has a 36 gigabit connection so room for expansion.
Copper lines cost “X” and fibre “Y” they should both go up by the same %. With no alternative available to us why should those of us stuck on copper subsidise those that have a choice or pay for more people to have a choice ? OR should invest in fibre and claw the installation cost back from fibre customers not from those where they think it isn’t profitable to install fibre.
If there is a price increase for copper services so be it but to claim it is for fibre installations where no choice is available is just hurtful.
Copper lines cost “X” and fibre “Y” they should both go up by the same %
They do! The regulated prices, including FTTC 40/10 and FTTP 40/10, have a formula linked to CPI (or 0% if CPI is negative). FTTP remains slightly more expensive at wholesale than FTTC: around £1.60+VAT per month from memory.
Equinox is about reducing the installation cost of FTTP and the cost of the higher speed tiers, to encourage take-up of FTTP – or to discourage take-up of Altnet FTTP, depending on which side of the fence you are on.
It does not actively disadvantage anyone on copper, including those where no FTTP is available.
Bingo.
Also the copper network will be significantly more expensive to run. BT won’t eat that forever, if you’re not moving to FTTP (You don’t have to go for a faster package, just change presentation) then you should end up paying more in the future to cover the cost of the legacy network.
OpenReach is applying the Carrot and Stick approach to drive people on to fibre connectivity from copper. When there’s no alternative it is merely a beating to pay for BT’s previous inaction and mistakes such as Gavin’s TV GFAST. Ho hum never mind, Altnets hit my town with true fibre next year.
From a different perspective: hike prices where you have no competition (xDSL) then use it to subsidise products where you do (FTTP). Wait for a few years, undercutting the price of many altnets, then hike prices due to “inflation” when they go bankrupt.
If I was in one of the areas not close to being upgraded. I would be printing out this news article and writing to your MP asking them to intervene with Openreach to get them to agree to start building in your area or not do the price increase in your area till they start the upgrade process there.
It cannot hurt to try. Your MP after all is supposed to be your advocate in your city.
You don’t pay OR a penny. The ISPs will be footing this bill and not you.
It’s purely to encourage people to change presentation from copper to FTTP, regardless of speed. This will require engineer visits to do, so it’ll take time regardless, and ISPs will have to organise this at contract end etc. so will be spread out regardless.
At the end of the day, if Openreach/BT had invested in fibre years earlier like the rest of Europe we wouldn’t be in this position.
But they and VM were greedy amd short sighted and now on the back foot from all the alt nets.
Are you sure about that?
“How Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it even existed”
https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
they’ve had the past 20 years to make a difference, way after Thatcher. They decided to sweat copper instead telling everyone that 80mbps was more than enough. In reality 80mbps were the lucky ones as most got nowhere near that. It’s only the ALTNETS that are forcing their hand now.
“they’ve had the past 20 years to make a difference, way after Thatcher.”
Over the last 20 years the Government and regulators have been on BT’s neck, with overregulation likely putting off investment into new infrastructure. Would you build an extension on your house and then rent it to your neighbour at knock down rates, close to the interest rate on the loan you took out to pay for it? I know I wouldn’t.
People blame BT for not investing in Fibre, but overregulation stifles investment in any industry and it’s clear the Government and regulators have been interfering with BT for the last 30 years.
Anonymous, you should look at BT’s history before rushing to judgement.
If you’re in a fibre area consider Cuckoo, I’m with them on a rolling monthly deal, no frills just a rock solid service.
https://www.cuckoo.co/
If Cuckoo uses openreach fibre then they need to update their system, according to them, I can’t get fibre, even so their FTTP is still more expensive than others including the alt network in my area
@Ad47uk
They do use Openreach fibre, that’s what I have .
Well, according to their website I can’t get their fibre, so it seems like their database have not updated as I can certainly get Openreach fibre here. But as I said, Cuckoo seems a bit on the pricy side for me anyway
Some care about more than just price, AD.
@XGS Is On, you may be right, but when they are charging £40 for 100Mb/s download where other providers charge less for it, then what is the advantage of using Couckoo? Oh yeah and 20Mb/s upload. I realise here we have the choice of Openreach or Zzoomm and to be honest for that price I would go with zoom, faster speed, cheaper and the same speed up and down.
i don’t want to pay anything for broadband to be honest, if I could do away with it, I would just another monthly bill. My view over the last 12 months is that these days broadband is a necessity, but if I can get it cheaper, and it still does what I need then that is what I am going to do. This is why I have decided to stay with Plusnet until the end of my contract in June and then look at now broadband if they still offer it at the price they do now unless plus net gives me a good offer.
I’d accept these changes if they applied only to areas where full fibre was available. As it stands, it’s just an increase in cost and nothing to do with fibre deployment (with my personal hat on). My professional hat says different things but I’m ignoring it!
This going to hurt many people’s with no fttp plan. Unfair like I’ve say before this isn’t competition and fair. Ofcom are useless and don’t care if you live with adsl/fttc but no full fibre but expecting you to pay more than fttp. Openreach are pure greedy. I knew it will going to happen anyway. Don’t forget April going up as well with the nasty high inflation will not helping many cost of living.
Openreach you are ashamed greedy monopoly in UK.
“Don’t forget April going up as well with the nasty high inflation will not helping many cost of living”
These changes are part of the same price rises due in April
I’d kill for FTTP so I’ll get hit hard by this 🙁
Nothing in my village just altnets and OR in every direction but here. One way is Netomina 3 miles away, other is OR 1 mile away, 3 miles the other way is Cityfibre and 4 miles in the other is Gigafast. N, S, E and W covered and not a single plan to build here in the middle.
I’d take at least 2 of those tomorrow if I could get them. Almost makes me consider moving.
Price rises wont effect me, I stopped giving broadband providers revenue years ago switching to 4G, My unlimited plan costs me less or the same as most of the ADSL offerings in my area for 40 to 70 times the speed of the 1.2 Meg copper provided and I’ve not had the perpetual loss of service issues and the associated frustration of dealing with ISPs and Openreach to get something done.
Openreach won’t see a penny from me I really think for at least 15 more years as our area is devoid of all plans for a commercial or Government (including R100) roll out.
All that said I’m also sure neither Openreach or Government give two hoots as I’m saving them both money, Openreach for not having to constantly fix the old falling apart copper bundle that serves us and the Gov by not subsidising any improvement in the entire 25 years we’ve been in the place.
Maybe i should look at 4G, but the last time I looked at 3 home mobile service they said it was not available here, which is strange since the three signal is good here.
BT need to get out of the exchanges as Telereal often controls that cost and the equipment is out of date (https://investegate.co.uk/british-telecom-plc/rns/bt-divests-property-portfolio/200106130712421678F/)
In the short term they should make PCP based SOGEA far more attractive than exchange based products. Exiting the exchanges would give them good cashflow to deliver FTTP whilst ensuring customer retention. This current plan looks like a gift to the FTTP competition which are starting to offer wholesale services.
I am looking at the Openreach Cablelink pricing page as I write and Openreach do not sell Cablelink based on bandwidth (1Gb or 10Gb), it is sold on the fibre count, i.e. 12f, 24f, 48f, 96f, 144f etc. so I have no idea why Openreach would release the pricing quote in this article to the press, because it is fundamentally misleading. And none of the prices quoted in this article are shown on Openreach’s Cablelink pricing page.
Cablelink is a product that is mostly consumed by Openreach’s competitors, like those AltNets that are building FTTP networks in areas that are being left behind by Openreach’s own FTTP network build, and should be tightly controlled by OFCOM.