Openreach Offer Cheaper UK 80Mbps FTTC Broadband Upgrades
Network access provider Openreach has announced a new special offer on bandwidth modifies, which essentially makes it cheaper for UK ISPs to upgrade customers on Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) and SOGEA broadband lines to an 80Mbps max download (20Mbps upload) speed.
The deal, which will be available for a period of six months between 4th September 2023 to 4th March 2024, is designed to help ISPs to upgrade customers on slower 18/2Mb, 40/2Mb, 40/10Mb and 55/10Mb packages to their top 80/20Mbps tier on hybrid fibre lines.
During this period, Openreach will waive the usual bandwidth modify charge (including for bulk upgrades) and offer a “discount on rental price so that the previous lower rental price continues to apply for a period of 6 months from the date the bandwidth modify order is completed“.
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Broadband ISPs that do not wish to be charged the full 80Mbps rental charge from the end of the reduced 6-month rental period will be able to do this, albeit only by placing an order to downgrade back to lower speeds to apply from the relevant date. Check out the public briefing for more details.
The promotion may be attractive to some consumers in areas with no modern FTTP options, although the usual caveats of FTTC lines apply, due to the impact of signal degradation over distance. Put another way, a lot of premises may struggle to get even close to the top 70-80Mbps speed on FTTC lines, and thus this new offer won’t offer those lines much benefit.
The offer’s availability to consumers is also dependent upon ISPs’ choosing to pass it on to their customers as an option. But Openreach rarely launches an offer without ISPs expressing some interest first.
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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Excellent. For some folks moving to 80/20 will be an eye-opener and result in upgrades to FTTP.
Good move.
Looks the main purpose is to encourage PSTN customers on to VOIP when taking the upgrade. 4 weeks today you will no longer be able to order a new PSTN line.
You think updating people from 40 to 80 will get them wanting FTTP? I have used internet connections on FTTC that is on the max and the difference is not really noticeable. the only difference if any is that streaming for multiple devices may be better. Some people I know that have gone from around 45Mb/s FTTC to 150Mb/s FTTp have not noticed any difference. Again the only difference would be if they downloaded a load of files, download films, whihc a lot don;t as it is mainly streaming these days or they have a a few people streaming at the same time.
I am still trying to find the advantage i have from going from 36Mb/s FTTC to 500Mb/s FTTP, the only difference is that some game files download faster.
Providers are pushing this full fibre, super-duper speeds to get people to change and yet when people change they wonder what all the fuss is about.
Your peer group is not representative of the wider public, Ad. We tend to have friends similar to ourselves. The take up numbers for FTTP speak for themselves.
Most of those with it available to them move to it when their current supplier contract is up if they don’t recontract. About 15% change provider each year, 2/3rds of them move to altnets where available, a fair few of those who stay with their Openreach supplier move to FTTP where available.
As with the other discussion the data is very clear. You and your peer group are irrelevant to the national trend. This seems to be a concept you find very difficult to grasp but it’s how it is. No shade, just reality.
No it a waste of time because my parents line max rate is 45Meg with SNR 4dB because their FTTC is far away (no point to upgrade) No room left to upgrade to 80Meg no chance for them.
Just because it doesn’t benefit your parents doesn’t make it pointless for the entire nation, Phil. The world doesn’t revolve around you, your parents or Cuckoo Oak.
Worthless to me as well, I can’t get copper, but might end up being useful for some.
It is nothing to do with my peer group as yo call it, I do talk to people that is not part of my peer group. But even so the chance of most people noticing any difference from the lower end of FTTc to the higher end is pretty slim. This is nothing to do with FTTP, this is the higher speed FTTC that Out of reach is trying to get people onto. but as others have said to get anything faster than 38Mb/s you really have to be pretty close to the Cabinet and have good cables.
Anyone who says they notice a difference in speed when they updated in normal use, I would say it is bull, unless they have a family with everyone pushing their broadband at the same time.
I don’t know what speed broadband you haver or if you updated to a faster speed, but if you have, can you really say you notice the difference? You would say yes even if you can’t.
As i said before I went from 36Mb/s to 500Mb/s and apart from when I download files it makes no flipping difference, sale tactics are used to make people think we all need super-duper speed.
Yes, I notice the difference. Many folks do, especially those that aren’t a single person in a home.
I have two connections and notice the difference depending which I’m using.
Security footage is constantly being uploaded. Files are synced between machines and cloud. When I switch a machine on it syncs with the cloud and the other machine.
So,yes, I notice the difference. It’s the difference between being connected to the Internet and feeling like it’s your home network.
You’re a light user, fine. Many folks use the cloud services like Ring, Blink, Google Drive, One Drive, etc, and benefit from higher bandwidth. They run better at 80/20 than 40/10 and better still at 150/30. The point of higher bandwidth is that you don’t notice it, things are just there.
Wont really notice the difference really but more of a selling point as people get blinded by speed numbers from adverts
Yep, I have not notice any difference most of the time going from FTTC to FTTP.
Good news for consumers as 80/20 Mbps will be fast enough for the majority of households at the moment.
Many people don’t need and don’t want to pay for the higher speeds that FTTP can offer, not yet anyway.
Not good news for the Altnets who are struggling to improve take-up rates of their FTTP. People will be happy to remain on FTTC for at least a couple of more years.
It’s true that 80/20 is a reasonable speed. Unfortunately that speed is only achievable if the premises is close to the FTTC cab, otherwise the speed drops off with distance. This isn’t the case with full fibre.
80/20 is no longer fit for purpose for a lot of people – tried downloading a game recently? Virtually every household will be doing so, with AAA titles now coming in at 120GB, this can be several hours even at 80Mbps.
@Cognizant – ‘Virtually every household will be doing so’. Really?
@Cognizant. At this time 80/20 Mbps is adequate in my mind.
I disagree that virtually every household will be downloading large game files.
Many households will be streaming TV and 80/20 will coffee with that perfectly well.
@Cognizant, but a lot of people don’t really download games, if you are gamer then yes you are correct, but as I have said before, normal use people are not going to notice any difference. you can stream on less than 36Mb/s, the max that is needed for 4K streaming is around 24Mb/s and that is on Iplayer, it is less on Netflix. If a family is using different devices then faster broadband is useful.
you tube can still stutter, even with my connection of 500Mb/s smart TVs seems to be limited on how much they can cope with
One day everyone will need ultra high speed FTTP, but not yet.
Not good news for the Altnet builders as they’re burning money like crazy, adding to their debts which now have higher interest rates, whilst waiting for take-up rates to improve.
They could be waiting a long time.
CityFibre are at 25% in their longest standing areas. Openreach are at 33% across the board including areas where they’ve only just built.
If altnets offer the right products at the right prices with the right customer service people move.
Wakefield is hardly a place famous for tech. It’s a city destroyed by mines closing down that’s still nowhere near recovering. Of the 127 homes I share a PON split with over a quarter have moved to an altnet in less than a year. This is exceptionally quick but not abnormal. Right product. Right service. Right price. Most commonly purchased tier 1 Gbit, not the lowest product.
I’d rather Openreach rolled back on their minimum handback thresholds and the limitations surrounding it. I used to be able to get 53 Mb despite a handback threshold of 35Mb.
Since they have started enforcing this, no ISP on Openreach will provision my line to anything over 40/10 which ends up at 37Mb usable after sync overheads. In 2023 I really would love to have that extra 15Mb instead of being told no you can’t have anything higher because we can only guarantee 32Mbps.
It’s a stupid limitation considering my line’s SNR is currently around 10db.
If you are with B head over to the community forum and post. Ive seen many over the years upgraded via there.
https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Fibre-broadband/bd-p/BTInfinity
Unfortunately not, I’m with Sky and they won’t budge. Really annoying.
They should install fttc cabinets or fttp or gfast nodes to the “remote” places that actually need the reliability of fibre. These places will never achieve 80/20
Oh good a cheap upgrade to 80Mb when my line can only manage 35Mb. Jog on BT. (And yes 35Mb is NOT enough to all those saying it is above – I will be taking any altnet service when they finally enable my road. Openreach seem to have forgotten my town exists.)
It’s the same story here. A town with over a 100,000 population.
It’s only got about 50% VM coverage.
No Alt Nets.
No Openreach FTTP either.
We’ve been on the Openreach upgrade list for years. They were taking about it coming soon during lockdown yet all these years later nothing has materialised…
Forgot to add, down the road a few miles away a town with 35,000 population has pretty much full VM coverage, Openreach FTTP and 2 Alt Nets building. It’s madness and make no financial sense. No Alt Net will turn a profit in that area.
@No Name
Yep, the Altnets won’t make a profit, waste of materials buried in the ground, unnecessary digging and disruption.
But the management of the Altnets won’t care, they’ll still get their juicy salaries and when it all goes pear shaped it’ll just be the misled investors that’ll lose their money.
Trying to understand if this could make any difference at all to my situation. We are several miles from the nearest cabinet and currently get the maximum speed available, which is a feeble 4mb/s. Is there any chance that this would offer even a 1 mb/s increase? I’m desperate for anything here.
You need Starlink!
It’s getting cheaper, offers reasonable speed and is reliable.
OFCOM should mandate that the ISP/Openreach to offer FTTC best possible speeds on those legacy lines.
The savings for Openreach when users take a capped 35 mbp connection must be negligible.