Openreach Offer Multiyear Fixed Price Rentals for 1Gbps UK Ethernet Lines
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today notified UK ISPs that they’ve launched a new special offer on their 1Gbps speed Ethernet Access Direct (EAD) lines, which will give providers a fixed price rental for new provides so long as they commit to at least a 3 or 5 year minimum contract term.
The new EAD 1Gb rental special offer is set to go live from 1st June 2026, which will provide fixed rental pricing for 3 or 5 year terms for new provides in the following Ofcom defined UK markets: Area 2, High Network Reach (HNR) and the Central London Area (CLA).
The special offer applies to all EAD 1Gb circuit types in the business access market, including Local Area (LA), Standard (STD) and Extended Reach (ER) circuits. Further details can be found here, although there are risks with committing to such long contract terms, especially with the new EAD 2.0 product being just around the corner.
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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.
Let’s hope they can reduce it – £370 for 1Gbps LL is kinda expensive these days.
£370 is expensive, Openreach charges for the tail are £155 so you should be able to buy a wires-only connectivity product from an ISP for no more than £250.
That was a few years ago now – but I went through a third party and I guess that’s why it was so expensive.
Offer after offer in their areas shows how worried they are at the decline in Ethernet volume over the last two years .
EAD2 is not around the corner in my view as CPs do not seem interested in it . No point launching a product if no one wants to buy it .