Openreach Reveal More 2024 UK Ethernet, PIA and Dark Fibre Price Rises

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has just announced the second batch of annual price increases for 2024 (see first batch), albeit this time focused more on their wholesale Ethernet (EAD, EBD etc.), OSA, Excess Construction Charges (ECC), SOTAP for Analogue, Dark Fibre and Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) products for UK ISPs, businesses and other networks.

Just to recap. Ofcom’s regulation (example) allows Openreach to increase prices across their various wholesale products, usually by the current level of inflation, although this may differ between products due to various factors (discounts etc.) and there could also be some decreases. But increases mean that ISPs on the same network will need to pay more for the services they sell, which often ends up being passed on to customers.

Once again, the price changes are too numerous to easily summarise as they occur across masses of different products, but you can find more details by following the links on their Pricing Page. Just to give an example, the annual rental for an 1Gbps EAD circuit will increase from £2,262 to £2,358 (+4.24%) – or from £2,850 to £2,946 when specifically used for FTTP (full fibre) aggregation.

However, it’s not all bad news, because Openreach have also announced the renewal and addition of some special offers for EAD 1Gb and EAD 10Gb lines (here and here). In addition, they’ve announced the withdrawal from new supply of some Optical Spectrum Access (OSA) FS3000 optical filter products, partly due to discontinued vendor supply (here).