Openreach to Withdraw Some Legacy UK FTTP and FTTC Broadband Speed Tiers UPDATE
Prices aren’t the only thing changing at Openreach (BT) today. The national UK network operator has also revealed that it will be withdrawing some of the “legacy” speed tiers on their Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP + FTTP on Demand) based broadband products for ISPs and their customers.
The public briefing summary on this doesn’t provide any useful information, except to confirm that they’re today notifying all Communication Providers (CP) about “legacy speed tiers being withdrawn from new supply” (here). But with a bit of cross-referencing from other documents, we were able to confirm the FTTP tiers that are due to be withdrawn.
For example, Openreach will be withdrawing both their 220Mbps / 20Mbps (download / upload) and 330Mbps / 30Mbps tiers, which isn’t surprising as both now have a comparably priced option with faster 30Mbps and 50Mbps upload speeds, respectively. The FTTP on Demand (FoD / FTTPoD) product also sees the same change, albeit excluding 220/20Mbps because it didn’t offer that in the first place.
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The briefing also mentions FTTC in its title but, at the time of writing, we haven’t been able to find any new withdrawal notices on their related speed tiers and are currently attempting to clarify what changes are actually being made to those tiers.
Openreach does occasionally withdraw legacy tiers, usually due to a lack of demand by CPs (inc. end-customers) or just to help simplify their product portfolio – often a combination of both. Existing customers on the withdrawn tiers will not be impacted, as the change only impacts new service supplies.
UPDATE 12th Dec 2024 @ 10:17am
We’ve been able to confirm that the FTTC tier being withdrawn is 40Mbps (2Mbps upload), which makes sense as this has long been superseded by the 40/10 tier.
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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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Openreach’s full fibre postcode checker’s been on the blink on and off since Friday. First it didn’t recognise a real and previously checked postcode as genuine, then it did and displayed results with refreshed presentation style but now it doesn’t even deny the postcode is real, just animating the little loading bars a few times before giving up without progressing to a results page.
The BT Wholesale Broadband Availability Checker still works normally.
I also spotted some issues with the Openreach checker, even in the context of BIDB where loading Openreach data was exceptionally slow/timing out (leading to it saying “Openreach FTTP is unknown local” from time to time).
Since we’re nearly at the end of 2024, they are probably prepping to deploy another update to their fibre rollout map and we’re due a significant one anyway, considering they have not touched the map at all since their last update on May 2024 (despite promising in clear text on their website that they would provide regular updates).
Yeah, they did indicate at the top of the page that they were experiencing technical issues with it. It’s back up now and I notice the design has been updated, so maybe that had something to do with the outage.
The Openreach map (towards the end of the page) didn’t seem to be affected and was working fine, though. I prefer the map anyway as it’s more detailed and you can see what exchange/cabinet your address is powered by, as well as a colour code with more info for their future plans in the area.
I hope Openreach will bring in FTTC 95/40 rather than 80/20. Most FTTC max line rate get 92/37 but limit to 80/20.
Openreach, and by extension BT Wholesale, have exactly zero interest in developing any new products for FTTC/VDSL, so they are not going to be adding any 95/40 speed tier as the goal is for every single person to have FTTP, which does not require regular electric costs to power it.
The reason is that, once FTTP is deployed in an area, Openreach incentivises ISPs to move customers off FTTC/VDSL: even if the property is not in an FTTP Priority Exchange area, ISPs will want to make sure their own costs are decreased, so if someone can get FTTP, then they will be moved to it.
In the main, FTTC is a deprecated/legacy product which has no future. To emphasise this point, since about 2022, Openreach do not add any new VDSL DSLAM cabinets in those locations where the existing cabinet allocation is full: instead customers either have to stay on the service they have or move to an altnet, until Openreach deploy FTTP in their area. And with all new properties ONLY being outfitted with FTTP, there’s basically no incentive for Openreach to increase cabinet capacity.
There will be no development as DSL based delivery is considered legacy. All efforts will be on FTTP rollout.
Why would they do that?
There used to be a 40/2 tier on FTTC – maybe that’s what’s going. A long time ago the 40/10 and 40/2 tiers were made the same price, so there was no reason to take 40/2.
The 40/2 profile still appears to be available where an exception for FTTC is granted (it was never offered for SOGEA), but there is even less reason to use it being significantly more costly than 40/10.
That’s right there was. I initially was on the 40/2 package way back in April 2012 when FTTC was first enabled in my area. There was not a 40/10 package at that time, or at least Sky didn’t offer it initially. I subsequently moved to Sky Fibre Pro (Anyone remember that?) in the July of 2012, I was probably amongst the first few customers to move over to that. And, I was running FTTC all the way until the end of last year, I went full time on Starlink, and 2024 was the year of FTTP in my area. Having essentially grown up around the internet (28.8k dialup 1997) I’ve seen phenomenal amounts of change in that time!
Openreach get increased funding based on the average speeds served at properties, domestic or commercial. 115/20 Mbps is less expensive wholesale than 80/20 or even 40/20 Mbps. 1000/115 Mbps has dropped slightly since the availability of 1800/120 Mbps.
Under Equinox, FTTP 115/20 is indeed cheaper than 40/10 (since the latter is an OFCOM regulated price which can’t be discounted) – but it is still slightly more expensive than 80/20.
https://www.openreach.com/content/dam/openreach/openreach-dam-files/documents/Equinox-pricing-model-for-Full-Fibre-Broadband-from-April-24-online.pdf
The standard FTTP price list is here, and note 11 says that the 220/20 and 330/30 tiers are to be dropped on 01/04/2025.
https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricing/loadProductPriceDetails.do?data=M80QNeH46o4g6JKGD604vTypQOKfNn%2Beo6vmoVhAOBZZ6rNZujnCs99NbIKJZPD9hXYmiijxH6wrCQm97GZMyQ%3D%3D
We’ve been told today that the 36Mbps and 50Mbps FTTP packages are going to be made unavailable to new customers, and only available to existing at their specific request. Everyone on 72Mbps or faster, basically – although we’ve also been told that the high tier is going to be priced at the same or less than the 36 and 50. We’ll see.
Seems unlikely given that the 40Mb/s FTTP product is regulated.
Openreach have to keep providing it, EE don’t have to sell it.
Strange they have kept the 330Mbit/s / 20Mbit/s
If they want to loose £1000 a year revenue from customers stranded in areas which are not yet even on the lists for FTTP . . . well stuff ’em.(Smiley face) That’s what you want, . . . that’s what will happen. Migration to other suppliers. Not that their previous behaviour clearly demonstrated their consistent lack of customer consideration . . . . DV . . . still fluffing waiting from last Xmas. They are a complete shower of Sh*t. BT/Openreach are too slow to catch a dose of the well known highly transmissable infection.
Withdrawing a product no-one sells, superceded by 40/10, isn’t going to cost tons of customers.
Hardly anyone in a private home brings a grand a year of revenue to Openreach. Certainly no-one with a legacy FTTC product.
Still as good an opportunity as any to have a rant about something completely irrelevant I guess.
Of course, in the Age of Dis-Service, its all the customers fault.