Monday, September 4th, 2017 (4:46 pm) - Score 10,331

BT Wholesale has published an updated price list (effective from 1st September 2017), which gives us a useful glimpse at the wholesale charges that UK ISPs will need to pay if they want to buy the operator’s 160Mbps (30Mbps upload) or 330Mbps (50Mbps upload) based G.fast broadband service.

A few months ago Openreach (BT) also published their first Early Market Deployment (EMD) prices for the new service, although a lot of ISPs will purchase the product via BT Wholesale rather than go direct to Openreach. The updated price list (MS Excel Spreadsheet) lists the two tiers as Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) products, albeit G.fast variants rather than the more familiar VDSL2 options.

Just for a rough comparison, here’s what BTW charges for both the new G.fast tiers and some of their more familiar VDSL2 and FTTP options (only focusing on the monthly rental). Take note that for FTTP the ‘Transition Product’ means that you have to take it alongside an existing line rental service (WLR or MPF), while Data Only is just for the fibre.

Product Rental +vat (Month) FTTC 80Mbps VDSL2 £16 FTTC 160Mbps G.fast £19 FTTC 330Mbps G.fast £23 FTTP 160Mbps [30Mbps upload] – Transition £19 FTTP 160Mbps [30Mbps upload] – Data Only £28 FTTP 330Mbps [30Mbps upload] – Transition £44 FTTP 330Mbps [50Mbps upload] – Transition £46 FTTP 330Mbps [30Mbps upload] – Data Only £53 FTTP 330Mbps [50Mbps upload] – Data Only £55

As usual ISPs will have to add their own costs on top of this for service delivery, VAT (20%), line rental, profit margins, data capacity, extra services and so forth in order to create the products we all buy. As a comparison, Sky Broadband charges about £43.99 inc. VAT per month for their unlimited ‘up to’ 76Mbps FTTC service (i.e. the 80Mbps VDSL2 tier above) and Plusnet will charge £38.98 for the same thing (includes line rental and excludes discounts).

We can clearly see above that the 160Mbps G.fast service has been positioned to make it very attractive for those either already on the 80Mbps service or anybody who may be considering an upgrade from older FTTC or ADSL2+ services. Mind you consumers may change their thinking once Ofcom starts forcing Openreach to dramatically cut the price of their 40Mbps FTTC tier (here), but that’s another story.

Similarly we note that the 160Mbps FTTP price is quite close to the G.fast price point (identical on the transition product), which is despite the notably higher cost of deploying the “full fibre” network vs G.fast. However this changes for the 330Mbps tiers, where FTTP pricing jumps significantly higher than the equivalent G.fast option.

Under the current plan Openreach’s existing G.fast pilot should become available to 1 million UK homes and businesses by the end of 2017 and it will then aim to reach 10 million premises by 2020 (here). G.fast is considered by many to be an interim solution and there is already a consultation about taking “full fibre” FTTP up to 10 million premises by around 2025 (here). Credits to Carl for pointing out the change.