Guernsey Regulator Orders Broadband Price Cuts of 11%
The Guernsey Competition & Regulatory Authority (GCRA) has ruled that the wholesale charges for broadband services on the English Channel Island, which are paid by ISPs and then passed on to consumers, should be lowered by 11% on average to create a “better deal for end-users while ensuring profits are reasonable.”
At present, Sure (Guernsey) Limited remains the dominant provider of these wholesale services on Guernsey. The operator is currently also working alongside the States of Guernsey on a joint £37.5m project to build a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the whole of Guernsey (30,000 premises) by the end of 2026 (here), which has already covered 9,000 premises and rising.
Residential packages on the new network, from Sure, start at £43 per month for a basic 30Mbps (3Mbps upload) plan, which rises to £52 for 50Mbps (5Mbps up), £58 for 100Mbps (10Mbps up), £69 for 300Mbps (30Mbps up) and £126 for 1000Mbps (50Mbps up). Suffice to say, it’s not particularly cheap compared with the UK market and upload performance is poor, but then competition and limited subsea capacity links remain an issue.
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However, the GCRA recently concluded a new assessment of broadband pricing at the wholesale level, which found that the average level of Sure’s wholesale broadband prices was still higher than the efficient level of its costs.
Extract from the GCRA Proposals
In particular, the analysis finds that over the 2024-2028 price control period, the estimated level of Sure’s prices (if these reflected the efficient level of costs) would on average be 11% lower than Sure’s current price level, if these were to increase from current levels in-line with the estimated long-run rate of inflation (2.2%).
To address this, the GCRA proposes to reduce the current prices of wholesale broadband products to the efficient cost-based level, from 1 January 2024. The GCRA proposes annual price caps for the weighted average monthly rental charge, for the period 2024 – 2028.
The proposed decision is now out for consultation, and the GCRA expects to finalise this by the autumn.
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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It’s a shame that the subsea cable link has such limited upload capacity – with full fibre you would’ve thought a ratio of 10:1 (or better) should be easily achievable…
better deal for end-users while ensuring profits are “reasonable”.
OFCOM (and every other quango beginning with the letter “OF”) take note.
An ignorant take comparing a relatively simple business analysis to the entire UK is not a way to make policy except maybe for advocating localism, however I think we all know how that plays out.
The cost to the States of Guernsey is really low only 12.5 million pounds over 5 years. 30 upload for £45 fibre is very steep, fastest 1000 £126. Jersey is 13 times the speed for the same cost!!!