BT Openreach Reduces FTTP Wholesale Prices By 37 Percent

BT has announced it will reduce the wholesale prices of its ultrafast Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) service by 37 percent.

BT Openreach will lower the price it charges communications providers (CPs) such as TalkTalk and Sky from £60 a month to £38 in June 2013.

The FTTP service, which is targeted at small and medium businesses, offers download speeds of up to 330Mbps and upload speeds of 30Mbps and was launched this summer following a successful commercial trial.

BT Openreach prices fall

“Our fibre plans are going very well. Our deployment is one of the fastest in the world and our services are proving very popular with the public,” commented Mike Galvin, managing director of next-generation access at Openreach.

“It is now time for us to focus further on FTTP and I am pleased to say that we are making it more affordable than ever. I am sure that small businesses will welcome this major price cut and I am also sure that our fibre on demand plans will be of great interest.”

The company has also announced that the new lower prices will also apply to its new FTTP on Demand (FoD) service, which will officially launch next year. FoD is also targeted at SMEs who want access to speeds of up to 80Mbps.

CPs will be charged a distance based construction charge due to the extra work involved with providing a direct fibre connection, although it will be up to them to decide whether or not to pass the cost to their customers.

BT says that premises are, on average, around 500 metres away from BT’s fibre network, a distance that would incur a charge of around £1,000, in addition to an installation fee of £500. This could be higher or lower depending on the distance, but BT says that charges are still being finalised and will be determined by a number of price bands. The company recently announced that it had added another one million premises to its fibre network.

“Fibre on Demand is the key to making sure the UK is the best of the major European countries with regards to broadband,” commented Andrew Ferguson, editor at thinkbroadband.com. “Fibre on Demand will be available as an option to around two thirds of the UK by the end of 2013. While the cost of £1500 for a property that needs 500m of fibre installing seems high, this is in line with Fibre to the Premise install costs in other countries.

“Our current estimate is that the big providers, if they decide to sell a 330 Mbps service, would charge around £70 to £90 per month, which is well below the $210 (plus taxes) that Verizon FiOS in the United States costs for similar downstream speeds.”

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