Openreach to Stop Selling 40Mbps FTTC Broadband Tier on 24th April
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today confirmed our report from last month (here) and revealed that they will withdraw, from new sale (provision), the once popular 40Mbps (2Mbps upload) tier for their Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) based broadband ISP lines – effective from 24th April 2025.
As we said last month, Openreach does occasionally withdraw legacy tiers, usually due to a lack of demand by Communication Providers (inc. end-customers) or just to help simplify their product portfolio – often a combination of both. The operator said, “this speed tier has been superseded by faster variants offered at the same or lower price“.
Existing customers on the withdrawn tiers will not be impacted, as the change only impacts new provisions. In this case, the operator’s 40/2 speed tier has long been superseded by the regulated 40/10 tier, and so its “stop sell” should not come as a huge surprise. The related briefing can be read here, although most of it is private.
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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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Slightly misleading headline. You mention in brackets later it’s only the 2meg up tier – but that’s actually the point.
The 40 meg down, 10 meg up is fine.
How pedantic
I don’t consider it misleading, most people would know (or at least presume) the one being retired is the 2Mbps upload one. It’s an unnecessary expense to continue for such low demand and interest.
Openreach won’t and shouldn’t phase out the 40/10 speed tier anytime soon because although it’s often the same price as 80/20, a lot of postcodes still don’t have access to anything above 40/10. BT still offer 10Mbps ADSL in areas with no fibre availability/coverage.
@Ryan. “most people” don’t even know that the upload and download speed may be different. “most people” refer to their internet connection as “WiFi”.
If it is true that 80/20 costs no more than 40/10 then 40/10 is redundant, regardless of the physics that may limit your speed.
@Billy Shears, when I say “most people”, I mean the average user reading the article as anyone visiting this forum to read articles like this typically has at least decent knowledge and understanding of ISPs and network technology.
If you see the prices that BT, Sky, Vodafone, etc charge for 40/10 and 80/20 – it would be silly not to go for 80/20 (if available to you) even if you don’t need that speed (like elderly customers). There’s also little to no difference in the wholesale price (the cost Openreach charge ISPs) between the two speed tiers, so I guess that’s the reason. In an ideal world, 150Mbps would be standard at a reasonable price for everyone – and it is in some countries. Of course, it’s 2025 and everything is becoming more reliant on faster speeds.
One downside of making everyone 80/20 would be that advertised speeds become lower, because ISPs need to obey the role that at least NN% of customers get the advertised speed. If you move all the people who can only ever get 20/2 from the 40/10 onto the 80/20 tier, they won’t get any faster speeds but it’ll just look like everyone else on 80/20 got slower.
40 down 10 up is cheaper than 40 down 2 up so I see only goodness here.
It’s good news indeed, times move on, speeds go up. They will for everyone else eventually when the FTTP rollout is completed.
Not quite everyone. 100% FTTP rollout is generally accepted to be unachievable. Just sayin’.
Do you mean 100% by Openreach, or 100% across all FTTP builders? I take the point, it’ll get close. I suppose there are still some unlucky souls who can’t even get FTTC, let alone FTTP. Starlink is a very good alternative to fixed line broadband in 2025.
@MikeP
It all depends how you define “100% FTTP rollout”. 100% geographical coverage is unachievable without huge subsidy. 100% population coverage would require significant subsidy for the most remote premises, as would 100% replacement of current copper lines (since there are some that are already unviable to repair if there’s cable damage).
But 100% replacement of FTTC is definitely doable in a commercial rollout.
Starlink is a very expensive alternative to FTTP, not just in the monthly fee but in your electricity bill too from what I’ve read.
@Billy Shears.
I would argue it is only an alternative to FTTP where FTTP is unavailable.
Up until April last year, it was my *only* option for going above FTTC speeds, so was therefore not comparable to FTTP.
Whats BT 40/10 FTTC ? My understanding is that I’m contracted for 50/10.
But, with increased usuage by the local populace at weekends, I’m lucky to get either of these two figures. Today its 40/4, with 18 ping and thats with an ethernet wire connection PC to router.
Some days, download can be into the 30s, whilst late at night during the working week it can hit 50s. It also seems to vary with temperature.
Bearing in mind the preferred broadband landline service in the locality is Virgin co-ax, I’m at a loss to understand why the apparent over-subscription at weekends occurs. Where’s the bottleneck ? Lack of local server capacity ?
40/10 and 80/20 were the “traditional” FTTC profiles. 55/10 came along a lot later. Temperature used to make a few Mbits difference to me, often with internet running better during the winter if I recall.
As for your over-subscription/speeds, you are with probably one of the most popular ISP’s in the UK – BT. You don’t tend to hear so much about “nightly slowdowns” these days, but I’d imagine the big ISP’s could be afflicted by it still.