Openreach’s Katie Milligan Talks Future FTTP Price Cuts and 3Gbps Broadband
The Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of UK broadband operator Openreach (BT), Katie Milligan, has told Richard Tang, the CEO of ISP Zen Internet, in a new interview that there are “no plans” for a third phase of “Equinox” price discounts on FTTP broadband services “at the moment“. The operator also touches on the possibility of faster speeds, like 3Gbps, among other things.
Just to recap. Openreach’s roll-out of a new 1.8Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which is costing them up to £15bn, has already reached nearly 16 million UK premises and they’re aiming to hit 25m by December 2026 (here), before reaching up to 30 million by 2030.
The national average take-up across their network is currently sitting around 34%. But Katie noted in today’s new interview that this is now “tending toward 50%” in footprints that are 2 years old, which will no doubt be something that rival networks will remain concerned about. Speaking of which, the operator’s FTTP customer base – across multiple supporting ISPs (e.g. BT, Sky Broadband, iDNET, Vodafone, TalkTalk and many more) – is now just going over 5.5 million.
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Most of Richard’s interview with Katie focuses upon the issues around getting more women into senior technology roles, although we’re naturally more focused on the network, competition and service delivery side of the discussion, which produced some interesting remarks.
For example, on Sky Broadband’s recent decision to start diversifying by harnessing CityFibre’s rival network (here), Katie says Openreach expected it to happen and then uses this to support their plan to push Ofcom for more deregulation in the forthcoming Telecoms Access Review 2026 (note: other than BT, Sky is their biggest customer).
“We always knew it would happen at some point. On a personal level, did I want it to happen? Maybe not, but the reality is it’s completely rational, and it shows that the market is working,” said Katie before adding: “When you’ve got this level of competition, actually we think there could be even further deregulation … There will be geographic areas where we will look for deregulation, very similar to what we’ve seen in the Ethernet market where there’s a central London area etc. We have to be able to compete.”
Price cuts and faster speeds
However, consumers hoping that Openreach might cut their wholesale prices on FTTP lines even further will be disappointed, since Katie re-iterated that they have no current plans for an Equinox 3 discount scheme. The prior Equinox 2 scheme, which was strongly opposed by smaller alternative networks, was cleared by Ofcom in 2023 (here). At that time the operator said they did not intend to “initiate further changes until at least 31st March 2026“, thus Katie isn’t saying anything new (the date given is after Ofcom’s next review / TAR).
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“There are no plans for [Equinox 3 discounts on FTTP] at the moment. Openreach will do entirely what’s rational … but the priority for us at the moment is building the network at pace, and being the lowest cost builder and connector,” said Katie. But we always take the phrase “no plans” with a pinch of salt, since it’s easily one of the most used and abused in the PR arsenal. Plans can and often do change, frequently at short notice, although in this case it’s likely to remain true until at least April 2026.
The discussion then switched to multi-gigabit speeds. At present Openreach’s fastest consumer FTTP tier is 1.8Gbps (1800Mbps), although this is limited to uploads of 120Mbps (220Mbps for businesses). But the operator is planning to launch symmetric speeds in their Project Gigabit build areas from April 2025, which will harness 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology (here).
However, many of the operator’s rivals have already launched faster 2-3Gbps tiers, with some even reaching the 7-10Gbps territory (e.g. YouFibre, B4RN etc.). Interestingly, on this point, Katie appears to hint that the operator might be considering a future speed boost to 3Gbps, but this could equally be just a random example for the purpose of the interview. In any case, it’s all an issue of demand and flexibility to adapt.
“Do I think residential customers will be asking, in the next 5 years, I need 3Gbps? No. But they could do and the priority for us is to make sure that we’re making the investment ahead of time, so we are putting in the Combi cards (ComboPON) and building our plans for XGS-PON etc,” said Katie. “The choice for us is to have optionality as to when we switch it on. But I don’t necessarily think it will come from a customer pull. I think it will be more around having it there and then working out what the level of demand is, before rolling it out.”
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Speaking of which, Katie also confirmed that their future Ethernet Access Direct 2.0 (EAD2) product for business customers and network operators, which is something we revealed a year ago (here), should finally enter the pilot phase with ISPs during 2025. This is roughly in keeping with what we reported before.
Remote rural builds
Finally, the interview switched to a focus on the challenges of building FTTP into some of the remotest rural areas, which Openreach has recently been doing commercially. But they’re set to go even deeper after scooping the larger Type C (cross-regional) build contracts under the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme (here) – reflecting up to £800m (state aid) to help upgrade 312,000 premises in remote areas of Scotland, England and Wales.
The interview also touched on the question of limits, since some locations are so remote as to currently be unviable for FTTP, even under Project Gigabit. “It will come down to individual premises, as opposed to whole areas. and then it if becomes disproportionately expensive, then we might have a discussion around whether or not there’s a handful of homes that we don’t do. But I can’t see at this point that we would be making these agreements now … we’ll work that out at the end of the decade,” said Katie.
Katie also confirmed that Openreach “didn’t bid” on the Type A and B [Project Gigabit] contracts because “they didn’t work for us … Either due to the scale of them or some of the commercial terms. We wanted to go big, just by virtue of our scale, and Type C was perfect for that.” Generally, most of the A/B contracts have been won by smaller alternative networks, as well as some larger players like CityFibre.
However, Katie also pointed out that they were still likely to build beyond the contract 312,000 premises under Type C, which is due to additionality (i.e. separately expanding coverage out via commercial investment, based on the same geographic areas passed using public investment). Put another way, rolling out into Type C areas will make some other areas viable for commercial build, which might not have been possible to reach before.
As usual, Richard Tang has managed to put together another interesting interview, which can be viewed in full below.
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 and Linkedin.
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3gbps with 200mbps upload. A (never ending) trial in one or two areas to tick the box for symmetric to make it look good. Only at the point where they really have to will it be mass available because customers going to rivals. It could be there from Day One like most of the Altnets. They sit there preaching no need to offer anything, even for those that want it.
Katie’s reply of “I think it will be more around having it there and then working out what the level of demand is, before rolling it out.” – sums up BT all along, hence sweating copper for so long an d telling everyone 80mbps was fast enough in their research, when average was less than 40mbps.
Competition came along and they started to panic, the writing was on the wall, hence why they now go full steam on FTTP.
You’re literally describing a rational business decision.
Supply based on demand.
It’s exactly what any half decent business person would do in the same position.
This is how running a business works — you don’t want to prematurely invest because investment costs money.
industry leading takeup, industry leading financials, industry leading coverage.
once again: openreach seem to be doing something right and the tiny number of people who think they need 5 gig symmetric can go to the altnet that offers it (if it’s in their area, and until they inevitably go bust)
yeah, the BT fan boys didn’t read my original comment properly, as expected.
Competition (even Nexfibre which is backed by VMO2 and not just a small Altnet) offer customer choice of faster download AND upload speeds RIGHT NOW.
BT will see (the dinosaur approach)….yawn……I don’t need to wait around, and can choose to defund BT by offering my money to another supplier who is more forward thinking and not trying to stifle product offerings. Not just me either and a growing number defunding BT everyday by going to competition.
I thought BT were launching symmetrical FTTP in April 2025? It was a major talking point in these forums a few months ago when it was announced.
Not quite. It’s another trial in another year to selected new sites only on one gig only. Their legacy GPON can’t handle symmetric at scale hence why in reality they can’t roll out. BT fan boys will try and deny this but it’s true.
In a number of areas that have combo cards but because BT still roll out GPON ONTs to customers as of today, there is a cost to change them, hence the procrastinating whilst competitors had more vision and mist don’t have this issue. BT could have defaulted on XGS-PON a few years ago but chose to stick to GPON.
anon:
Why do you hate BT so much? They clearly said they are launching straight to market symmetrical FTTP in April 2025? And its without upgrading your ONT according to the news article. If BT Openreach is so bad than why do they have the highest take up rate? Cityfibre is in financial trouble which is also common amoungst other altnets. I have Openreach broadband and its perfectly OK apart from the 110meg upload speed which is getting the option to be upgraded to symmetrical in less than 6 months time. When that happens the anti-BT wagon will have to think of something else to complain about.
K – hate is a strong word. BT are not offering symmetric anytime soon. Read the original ISPReview article and what I said above. It all smoke and mirrors with trials.
I’m sick of BT dragging their feet and choosing the wrong strategy other for them to try and milk money from tax payer later on with upgrades or end customers – its the reason FTTC and copper was sweated. ONLY when competition came along and government intervention did they see the light of FTTP deployment and then they wanted to cripple it because to this day, they made a bad choice to continue deploying GPON ONTs in customers homes which will cost later to replace for XGS-PON. In reality, they are hoping the ALTNETS go broke so they only offer XGS-PON for a sizable end customer premium or not even bother changing from GPON. Everything takes decades to do with BT.
Meanwhile, the ALTNETS and even VMO2 come along and offer CHOICE with symmetric and price rather than telling everyone what they think they need.
it looks like a lot of people do not get it. This is a technology market.You do not build for teh here and now you build for the future.l Today most people probably do not need more then 1Gb (i personbally would go for the fasteest download and upload possible and use it) but what happens when they do, 8K TV sales are projected to triple by 2027, more people working from home, Games streaming, PS6 likely to be digital only, huge game files that need downloading. The need for faster internet is coming, not very bright to wait till people need it to build it. Do you think Bill Gates waited for people to say we need a GUI based OS before building a replacement to DOS or Steve Jobs waited for people to say we do not need 3.5inch floopy or DVD drives before binning them. It would be a mistake for open reach to be last to the party
If that gets you so upset you feel the need to rant about it on here on the daily it’s probably time to evaluate a few things.
Litterally the only reason I’m considering VM is because I’d like faster upload speeds.
I’d personally celebrate having a stable 2.5Mbps download, yep megabyte. My guarenteed speed is 1mbps download. Upload us around 0.3mbps. Fibre cables are less than 3m from my home, landed there in 2018. Some moron failed to connect 2 cabinets so a village was missed. BT didn’t replace the aluminium lines decades ago and some are still forming part of the copper connection here. It’s so depressing to read about these speeds..
Katie can see the absolute need for things like 10 Gbps options in the business ethernet sector but for the consumer market does not think residential customers will be asking for 3 Gbps products yet.
Katie Milligan are correct there – residential customers doesn’t need 3Gbps!
I would think the biggest use of bandwidth by most consumers is streaming video. A 4K stream is about 30M bps, so even with 4 concurrent 4K streams 150Mbps is going to be sufficient for most consumers for the next few years.
IMO there’s a distinction between “need” vs “willing to pay for”. I suspect ~90% of the market will be happy with speeds <= 1 Gb/s over the next 5 years, but perhaps that 10% will be willing to pay enough that it's worthwhile (especially given e.g. the potential to sell faster services to businesses who might not have bought a leased line).
Given most consumers use WiFi I think the ratio of WiFi speeds to network speeds is worth paying attention to. Historically WiFi speeds have been significantly faster than network speeds, but that's no longer holding true.
By the time BT get to it, the public will probably would have been screaming for it, much like FTTP. They thought they were cosy sweating copper telling us all that FTTC was plenty fast enough until the ALTNETS arrived and kicked them into the kerb.
I’m being flippant of course, customers are more likely to need symmetric upload first and BT’s current GPON can’t even deliver that reliably at scale because they need XGS-PON (or newer) and they haven’t enabled that whilst competition has.
CityFibre, F&W, etc. have no issue offering a symmetrical service over GPON. It’s possible.
With respect to upgrading from GPON to XGS-PON… I doubt we’ll see the same sort of lag as we’ve seen with upgrades from FTTC to FTTP. Fundamentally it’s a much more straightforward upgrade — swap out a few line cards and away you go. No digging up roads required.
“customers are more likely to need symmetric upload first and BT’s current GPON can’t even deliver that reliably at scale because they need XGS-PON (or newer) and they haven’t enabled that whilst competition has”
I’d wager not many customers require symmetric service, most people use their internet connections for watching Netflix, Prime, YouTube, etc and live streaming TV. Even for gaming and working from home, less than 200mb/s downstream would probably suffice for most.
We’re currently with Plusnet on FTTC and Fibre is imminent on our road, although we could easily manage with Full Fibre 74, I’ll probably go for the Full Fibre 145. The only reason I’d go for the Full Fibre 145, even though it’s more than required, is because the price is currently the same as the Full Fibre 74 package. I could go for the Full Fibre 300 for £2 per month more, but I don’t think we’d notice the difference with our usage.
Increase in upload usage over time is really slow. Increase in 2020-1 was people working from home and it’s barely moved since. Last numbers I saw it actually dropped a little.
Biggest chunk of upload traffic is by far torrents even now. Not exactly something Openreach customers are desperate to cater to, people’s ratios.
You’re obviously entitled to an opinion. If you’re interested in facts instead find out what proportion of VM XGSPON customers pay extra for symmetrical. That’s people who need it and those who want it enough that they’ll pay as well.
Hardly anyone is as fixated on symmetrical uploads as you are: sorry. Not offering them isn’t hurting Openreach much: if it were they’d respond faster.
BT fan boys, stick to your naff service, meanwhile those of us who can, will defund BT and go to what we see as fitting our needs with the competition. You stay on your lovely GPON and crippled upload and think it’s fab. As for Cityfibre the remaining GPON that was done early in roll out is going to be converted over to XGS-PON with a lot already done.
I agree. As a very technical person 1G is *more* than enough, to be honest most of the time I’d not notice much of a difference if I was on 500Mb. However the *one* thing I’d pay for is higher upload speed, ideally symmetric – thats why I had to go to 1G – for the extra 40Mb upload. It’s really frustrating as we know it would cost them exactly zero to just give everyone symmetric, even over gpon. It works fine on cityfibre – as most people don’t use upload for continuous, but rather for short bursts for example if I’m watching netflix i’t coming in at say 30Mb and it makes no difference if it’s faster.
If I’m working from home and uploading a file, it takes an age and I’m sat there not doing anything while it uploads, because I need to be available to do that task that comes after that. It would be the same if I was uploading photos or youtube videos in personal time, so it’s not only a WFH thing.
“IMO there’s a distinction between “need” vs “willing to pay for”.”
Yes exactly. Uploading say a 3 GB file on a regular basis it used to take around 16 or 17 minutes on my Virgin connection. Now it takes less than 30 seconds with my CityFibre 1 gig connection. On Openreach’s top package it would take about 4 minutes. Do I therefore “need” a symmetric connection to upload that file? No, obviously, I just have to waste time waiting instead. These time savings are significant and have value.
A lot of the arguments against multi-gig and symmetric speeds seem to come down to whether you can do the thing at all i.e. streaming on multiple devices on 4K. Obviously that is a baseline requirement but it is not the real value of those services. The value is being able to transfer data quickly in bursts when needed. I don’t use any greater quantity of data in either direction than I did with my Virgin connection so that is the wrong place to look for demand.
I’m loving the use of ‘defunding’ here. I use whatever networks best suit my needs for the most part. I can’t say I am passionate enough to think I’m making a statement by ‘defunding’ a company. I don’t think I’m defunding Ford, JLR or whomever by not driving one of their cars or Heinz by not buying their soup.
I guess I live in a bigger world.
You really can’t engage with anything that was written so just ranting about the same things as ever. I can’t say I understand it but given what you’ve said about your living arrangements it makes more sense now.
FTTP since 2019, well into first quarter of the country, probably subsided by the taxpayer and constant complaining over the upload for years. Curious about what you’re going to do with all the capacity when it arrives?
I have a LAN to LAN VPN setup with my parents to allow for offsite backups, so in my case I definitely welcome faster upload speeds depending on the size of the backup/restore.
Recently when I changed the backup software and had to start from scratch, I ended up taking the whole server to my house because it was taking too long remotely at ~100mbps.
Witcher, I was correct in defunding BT/Openreach. If I am on their network now and go to ALTNET once available, like others, then it is defunding them. They no longer get the money…..
You don’t fund your electricity supplier, you don’t fund your local supermarket or store. You pay for goods and services.
Defunding might sound like edgy activism but not buying a product isn’t it.
You’ve posted a bunch more on this in the past couple of days, most of it incoherent ranting. I know your cage was rattled by being able to order CityFibre but are you okay?
@bigdave I have BT full fibre so called 900mb download speed. It isn’t fast enough to stream prime video in ultra hd HDR. This is with both apple TV and a fire cube.
@Bruce
Sounds like there’s something wrong with either your WAN or LAN connection, because that should be enough to comfortably stream 4K.
mr tang’s isp piggy backs on Openreach networks, he’s really after a cost reduction from Openreach, if he acts as an interview plant
To be fair, Zen’s CEO has now interviewed masses of altnets too, only two of which they use (CityFibre and Trooli). But as a retail ISP I’m sure they’d welcome a wholesale cost reduction, as would they all, much like consumers.
Of course a reduction in wholesale cost would be most welcome by any business but, at least Zen pass on some of the savings to their end users who are in the area served by CityFibre.
Last time Openreach came up with a discount scheme (Equinox 2) the only ones complaining were the altnets, I can hear them screaming “anticompetitive” already if they tried to bring in further cost reductions.
although moves such as the Sky/CityFibre deal would bolster Openreach’s case for a new round of cuts – clearly the competitive market Ofcom and the altnet fans want has materialised and it is only right and proper that OR can engage in full, two-way competition.
Ivor, except they don’t. Introductory offers may come down a bit, but post contract prices relatively as before the so called equinox price change.
“Future FTTP Price Cuts” will not apply to growing number of people living in newly built areas served by companies like OFNL, MS3 where they have monopoly.
We expect most medium sized companies to merge or go bankrupt leaving a bigger operator in the long term, in the meanwhile yes you will have a regional monopoly but I think most people expect the market to correct this. Atleast imo.
Most people do not need 3GBPS but it would be good to have choice. I understand Openreach serve a far larger network compared to Alt Nets so the capability is slightly different. Unfortunately Openreach have not built FTTP on my street but have done work in my area (street behind has had fttp for a year). I did reach out and they will not service the area until 2025. The UK are behind with fast internet connections but also in price. It looks like the high rates Openreach charge will cover the fttp build.
At the end of the day if Openreach thought they would get 20-30% take up on any new product they would do it. If they only think maybe 1-2% they would probably take a view that’s it’s not worth the investment.
Who cares if you are able to access a lovely symmetric ALTNET deploying correct technology for future not just the now. BT can stay stuck in the mud with their business decisions that favour their expensive leased line business. Just don’t come cap in hand to tax payer for funding to upgrade your legacy network again.
People might not need 3gb, but my good doesnt it look good on your page/price structure?
imgine being in a YF/OR area and picking 3gig from OR for £100+ or 8gig 1:1 from YF for £100, I know where I’d be sending my money every month.
I’m in a Openreach and YouFibre area I have had both services even at the same time, I stayed with YouFibre and cancels the Openreach circuit due to upload speeds and cost, for the price of 115Mbps 10 up and static IP at the time on OR YouFibre could do 2+Gbps symmetric with static IP so it was a no brainer, admittedly I went for the gigabit symmetric as I don’t need faster right now but knowing I can upgrade is good.
Let’s just say my current gig upload gets fully saturated for at least an hour if not hours each time I do video editing or return from holiday due to the offsite backup.
When I was on VM with the old 55Mbps upload it would take forever to get anything done.
This is a strategic national resource effecting the configuration, competitiveness, capability and development of the UK economy. There should be a drive to get it installed ASAP. The evidence is already showing UK is trailling well behind competitors.
Odd that something like HS2,the future service of which will impact only a small proportion of the proportion of the population, get’s “Grant-in-Aid” funding direct from the taxpayer to the extent of hundreds of billions, whereas true high-speed broadband gets crumbs.
Thank Christ Motorways and North Sea Gas weren’t rolled-out on a “Business basis” – the M1 would still be at the Watford Gap.