Openreach XGS-PON is coming

As discussed in a recent thread and subsequent news article over at ISPR…

XGS-PON is coming to the Openreach FTTP network. Probably some time in 2026.

Here is the Openreach XGS-PON Supplier Technical Information Note with all the speed tiers, including 2.5 and 3.3 Gbps symmetric tiers.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

As discussed in a recent thread and subsequent news article over at ISPR…

XGS-PON is coming to the Openreach FTTP network. Probably some time in 2026.

Here is the Openreach XGS-PON Supplier Technical Information Note with all the speed tiers, including 2.5 and 3.3 Gbps symmetric tiers.

a wee bit too many tiers ......... i mean do we really need 40/10 and 40/15

a wee bit too many tiers ......... i mean do we really need 40/10 and 40/15

But what needs to be considered, is that Openreach will want a variety of products that can be all things to all people.
For some folk those lower speeds would be just fine. To be honest, my 330/50 g.Fast is more than we need.
Different strokes for different folks innit

As noted by @Zarjaz - Openreach will basically want to be able to offer the entire "farm" on XGS-PON - this includes all the existing and perhaps 'legacy' speed tiers to their ISP customers.

As a pure wholesale network, they would not want to put themselves in a position where a technology change, means that they can no longer service all possible clientele.

(I do realise that they can run GPON and XGS-PON on the same bit of glass just on different non-interfering waves - but that may be a transitory arrangement rather than long term steady state arrangement where they drop back to one active PON technology on the same network)

Edited by Pheasant (Sun 18-May-25 17:29:39)

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

a wee bit too many tiers ......... i mean do we really need 40/10 and 40/15

But what needs to be considered, is that Openreach will want a variety of products that can be all things to all people.
For some folk those lower speeds would be just fine. To be honest, my 330/50 g.Fast is more than we need.
Different strokes for different folks innit

I do agree with the lower speeds, even the 0.5/0.5 product it makes sense, but less so 40/10 and 40/product. I could even understand a 40/40 product.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

As noted by @Zarjaz - Openreach will basically want to be able to offer the entire "farm" on XGS-PON - this includes all the existing and perhaps 'legacy' speed tiers to their ISP customers.

pricing alone will make them pointless to an extent.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

As a pure wholesale network, they would not want to put themselves in a position where a technology change, means that they can no longer service all possible clientele.

(I do realise that they can run GPON and XGS-PON on the same bit of glass just on different non-interfering waves - but that may be a transitory arrangement rather than long term steady state arrangement where they drop back to one active PON technology on the same network)

they will run the combo pon spec for quite awhile - maybe into 30s.

In reply to a post by Taras:

pricing alone will make them pointless to an extent.

Ah yes well the commercials and pricing as always will be 'interesting' when they do get announced. My guess is that they wont announce anything until Ofcom publishes the initial TAR output in Spring '26.

they will run the combo pon spec for quite awhile - maybe into 30s.

No reason why not, as long as they can get Nokia to supply their own equivalent for at least a two-supplier alternative. Otherwise the existing WDMs in the optical distribution frames beckon.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

To be honest, my 330/50 g.Fast is more than we need.

G.fast will phased out sooner or later. Replaced by FTTP.

Yes, lots of FTTP in near by estates, I worked on quite a few.

My nineties estate is all ducted, but no FTTP from anyone here, despite it being reasonably easy to deploy. Will see what happens to my g.Fast in the interim.

Indeed, we don't need 40/10 and 40/15. These too many tiers are deliberately being offered so they can misuse the price packages.

What difference would 10-15Mbps upload speed give to a customer? Aside from artificially making a price difference to the packages.

If XGS-PON is being rolled out, it doesn't make much sense to continue offering asymmetrical speeds. They need to inflate the price of their symmetrical services and this is part of their marketing strategy.

It reminds me of the Philips Ultra Efficient LED bulbs Energy rating A 60W equivalent to 4Watts and that's £9 but a non Ultra efficient of the same bulb that is Energy rating E is 7W=60W 2 pack costs only £4.50.

Why can't they all make them Ultra Efficient by default? They won't because they want to use this as an opportunity to increase the expense of these variants.

I'm seeing a similarity in the broadband packages as well. But most of the Altnets of-course are symmetric by default as they need to persuade customers to switch to their service. Openreach know their FTTC packages are not symmetrical and they try to push those same packages for FTTP knowing that they will still get those customers especially in areas with only Openreach FTTP.

People want better upload for home NAS server streaming straight to TV in every rooms

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by Taras:

pricing alone will make them pointless to an extent.

Ah yes well the commercials and pricing as always will be 'interesting' when they do get announced. My guess is that they wont announce anything until Ofcom publishes the initial TAR output in Spring '26.

suspect some of the product tiers will be the same price or priced within a pound of each other. Part of the reason of the forward release is that to allow isps to make sure they upgrade their pipes and to have that ready.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

they will run the combo pon spec for quite awhile - maybe into 30s.

No reason why not, as long as they can get Nokia to supply their own equivalent for at least a two-supplier alternative. Otherwise the existing WDMs in the optical distribution frames beckon.

in theory combo pon doubles the amount of connects on the current infrastructure - so 32 users on gpon and 32 users on xgspon. There is lots of good reasons to run multiple fibre standards thru one glass fibre. The downside is the extra cost.

Bt (not sure if it was bt or ee) did this burst offer say 500mbits in the first month if you had a lower package. I could seem them doing on demand burstable packages - more geared to smes i guess but i can see the marketing logic for that.

i hope or retires g.fast after enabling all g.fast areas to fttp

In reply to a post by Taras:

they will run the combo pon spec for quite awhile - maybe into 30s.

Depends. These faster and symmetric tiers are reputedly only available in greenfield, government-supported rollouts. They *could* choose to run only XGS-PON in these areas.

The flip side is, they could delay rolling out XGS-PON to the existing FTTP network for quite a long time.

Initially as a ‘trial’ (from 2026 as it reads from their end of February press release on GPON symmetric) that certainly looks to be the case.

How quickly they decide to spin this out across the whole network is debatable: really when, not if, I believe.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Here is the Openreach XGS-PON Supplier Technical Information Note with all the speed tiers, including 2.5 and 3.3 Gbps symmetric tiers.

I do wonder how they came to these 'prioritised' rates. On xDSL these were actually the Committed Information Rate, which was the bandwidth guaranteed when using Ethernet products over this, eg EoFTTC / EoFTTP etc. 'Prioritised' suggests there's no longer a guaranee and also the bandwidth's are seemingly all a bit arbitrarily defined.

Would love to see some insight into this and how this should be diced and sliced.

Personally I'd take the 2.488gbps/1.244gbps bandwidth across GPON and 9.952gbps on XGS-PON and divide by 32 (their max split) which equates to 77.75/38.875 on GPON and 311mbps on XGS-PON and align products on a fixed multiple (say 4x) of these values. So speeds up to 311mbps on GPON and 1.244gbps on XGS-PON. Anything faster on these techs is just selling old rope imo and slamming straight into a very hard wall.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

People want better upload for home NAS server streaming straight to TV in every rooms

Fewer and fewer people run home NASes these days. If you ask Mr & Mrs Average, they are streaming from Netflix / Amazon / Apple / Spotify etc.

And in any case, if you have a home NAS, you don't care about Internet upload, since the content stays local.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

People want better upload for home NAS server streaming straight to TV in every rooms

That doesn't make any sense,

"you want higher upload speed for a home nas to serve a lan"

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Taras:

they will run the combo pon spec for quite awhile - maybe into 30s.

Depends. These faster and symmetric tiers are reputedly only available in greenfield, government-supported rollouts. They *could* choose to run only XGS-PON in these areas.

Do we actually know that, we know the 1g/1g is gpon and type c project gig areas but is the xgspon the same.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The flip side is, they could delay rolling out XGS-PON to the existing FTTP network for quite a long time.

yes but i don't think they would have released the sin document so early. I suspect the trial will be based upon any in field issues such as isp routers, deploying of the xgs-pon onts(that said they've done 1gbit to 2.5 ont swaps) etc And also any other random issue that they hadn't thought of. It is their first fttp transition product.

If or hadn't had altnet xgs-pon competition then i'd agree with "we streatch out g-pon as long as pos" type thing.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

And in any case, if you have a home NAS, you don't care about Internet upload, since the content stays local.

Most people with a NAS do care about upload speeds as they store their offsite backup's in the cloud (thats if they follow the 3-2-1 backup principle).

In reply to a post by zzing123:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Here is the Openreach XGS-PON Supplier Technical Information Note with all the speed tiers, including 2.5 and 3.3 Gbps symmetric tiers.

I do wonder how they came to these 'prioritised' rates. On xDSL these were actually the Committed Information Rate, which was the bandwidth guaranteed when using Ethernet products over this, eg EoFTTC / EoFTTP etc. 'Prioritised' suggests there's no longer a guaranee and also the bandwidth's are seemingly all a bit arbitrarily defined.

Would love to see some insight into this and how this should be diced and sliced.

Personally I'd take the 2.488gbps/1.244gbps bandwidth across GPON and 9.952gbps on XGS-PON and divide by 32 (their max split) which equates to 77.75/38.875 on GPON and 311mbps on XGS-PON and align products on a fixed multiple (say 4x) of these values. So speeds up to 311mbps on GPON and 1.244gbps on XGS-PON. Anything faster on these techs is just selling old rope imo and slamming straight into a very hard wall.

You'd ignore the compulsory 15% FEC overhead on XGSPON in these very precise calculations I guess.

I wonder if OR will actually be using 50GPON OLTs? Adtrans latest ones do GPON/XGS-PON/50GPON all on the same OLT for example.

While I'd expect they'd use XGS-PON for the CPEs as it will be way cheaper, given ORs main cost is likely to be labour and system integration, wonder if it makes sense to use 50GPON capable OLTs so they don't need to rip it all out again in 5-10 years time?

Their OLT estate is a mixture of legacy Huawei, which as mandated by his majesty’s government they’re supplanting with Nokia and Adtran. A tiny bit, relatively, of ECI is left as ultra legacy.

Even with all the planned exchange closures they are serving FTTP from something like 959 handover exchanges. Many of these will have several OLT chassis. So it’s a fairly substantial estate.

Openreach also deliberately have multi source agreements in place, so broadly speaking they will deploy devices with an equivalent functionality and long term support basis. They have done some field tests over the live network with 50 GPON with Nokia in Ipswich, but I don’t believe they are looking at any commercial deployment until the prices and availability of such kit from all their key suppliers improves. So I would say they will continue with GPON and now XGS-PON for the immediate foreseeable future.

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

I wonder if OR will actually be using 50GPON OLTs? Adtrans latest ones do GPON/XGS-PON/50GPON all on the same OLT for example.

The STIN very clearly states the service is XGS-PON. Having 50G optics sitting there doing nothing would be a waste. Equipment has a 5-10 year support lifecycle anyway.

Also, we are talking about a primarily residential service. If they were delivering 10G leased lines over PON then there might be an argument, but I expect they will to keep leased lines on dedicated fibres, in part to justify the premium pricing.

not sure if this will ever get into OR's portfolio ...

https://www.nokia.com/fixed-networks/lightspan-mf/

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Also, we are talking about a primarily residential service. If they were delivering 10G leased lines over PON then there might be an argument, but I expect they will to keep leased lines on dedicated fibres, in part to justify the premium pricing.

On security alone they will do so. That said i do think it might be wise for or to increase pon offerings to SMEs. Of course doing stuff on 10g pon is fine, its a beancounter job - span the investment over 5-7 years and you make a tidy profit.

I wouldn't be surprised if OR doesn't jump to 50gb pon but takes 25g pon first becasue of cheapness but wait and see.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Fewer and fewer people run home NASes these days. If you ask Mr & Mrs Average, they are streaming from Netflix / Amazon / Apple / Spotify etc.

And in any case, if you have a home NAS, you don't care about Internet upload, since the content stays local.

I would love extra upload for my NAS. It's not used at all for streaming, but for local site backups of important emails, docs., etc. It then gets backed up to the Cloud, so yes, give me more upload please.

In reply to a post by Taras:

not sure if this will ever get into OR's portfolio ...

https://www.nokia.com/fixed-networks/lightspan-mf/

Pretty sure I read somewhere that they use 7360 ISAM FX chassis from Nokia. Adtran chassis seem a lot smaller, so more required to serve a larger area. The big Nokias will take up to 16 cards.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

People want better upload for home NAS server streaming straight to TV in every rooms

Yes, that's true and I never said for once that upload speed wasn't important, for many content creators upload is even more important than download!
What I meant is that a package with a limit of 10 or 15Mbps is so slow that it is ridiculous to include it as separate XGS-PON FTTP packages.

Originally we had 40/10, 40/15 and 80/20 speed packages under FTTC. The technological limitation is the only compelling excuse for Openreach to offer such packages as FTTC doesn't allow higher than 20Mbps upload speed!

But here we are talking about FTTP and that too with XGS-PON. My argument was that such lower tier packages shouldn't be included. The lowest starting package should be 100/100 by default like what most of the other Altnets provide!

For this reason, I feel it is very mischievous to be offering such lower tier asymmetric packages because then most users simply won't see a need to upgrade to FTTP for these lower tier packages. Though, we all know that once Openreach do upgrade us to FTTP then we can't order an FTTC package in that area ever again. Openreach thus want to force us to pay extra to have symmetrical speeds and that isn't really fair considering how long some customers have waited for the XGS-PON upgrade while others have finally waited to get Openreach FTTP.

Of-course I suspect this is going to affect rural customers the most as they are more likely to have Openreach FTTP without another Altnet FTTP network to choose from. But in urban areas with other Altnet offerings Openreach might have a more challenging time to get customers if they offer these asymmetric tier packages.

We all know what Openreach and BTWholesale are like. BTw don't sell cheaper if want symmetric on Openreach FTTP. Maybe leased line are much cheaper than BTw for contention ratio of 1:1 with symmetric speed up to 1Gbps for home.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Maybe leased line are much cheaper than BTw for contention ratio of 1:1 with symmetric speed up to 1Gbps for home.

Nope. No where near.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

But here we are talking about FTTP and that too with XGS-PON. My argument was that such lower tier packages shouldn't be included. The lowest starting package should be 100/100 by default like what most of the other Altnets provide!

For this reason, I feel it is very mischievous to be offering such lower tier asymmetric packages because then most users simply won't see a need to upgrade to FTTP for these lower tier packages.

I see the opposite.

Openreach needs to migrate users from copper to fibre, but customers won't accept being forced onto higher speeds that they don't want - and perceive that they are being forced to pay extra for.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Openreach need to be able to give them a like-for-like swap, otherwise they will hang onto their copper connections for as long as possible.

Exactly that!

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

But in urban areas with other Altnet offerings Openreach might have a more challenging time to get customers if they offer these asymmetric tier packages.

That doesn't make sense to me: on XGS-PON, Openreach are going to be offering symmetric packages *in addition* to the existing asymmetric tiers. So anybody who wants symmetric (and is prepared to pay whatever the price turns out to be) can get it.

But there's the rub: the price is the massive unknown here. Given that the 1000/1000 tier has already been announced at £100+VAT per month wholesale, one has to presume that the faster tiers will be above that.

I suspect that many people who whinge about "needing" symmetric will find that in reality 1000/115 meets their needs just fine, and they can let their NAS backups run overnight rather than pay the extra.

As for Openreach having a "challenging time": it's not our business to tell Openreach what their strategy should be for customer aquisition and retention.

The percentage of home users who want fast upload speeds is still very small. Users with home NASes and massive content creators are in the minority (of the population at large, as opposed to Thinkbroadband forum users).

Personally, I think Openreach doesn't care about losing those to Altnets. So what if it reduces their eventual penetration rate from 100% to 90%? They are losing the 10% of least profitable customers. In any case, they have to let Altnets have *some* of the cake. If they squeezed the altnets out of business entirely, that would be taken to be anti-competitive behaviour. They need to show to Ofcom that competition is "working" and be released from some of their regulatory shackles; the only way to achieve that is by allowing a space in the market for altnets to operate.

In that context, Openreach's approach seems eminently sound. You may not *like* it that you can't get cheap symmetric broadband at home from Openreach, but from an investment point of view it makes a lot of sense. And that's before you consider their highly profitable leased line business.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I suspect that many people who whinge about "needing" symmetric will find that in reality 1000/115 meets their needs just fine, and they can let their NAS backups run overnight rather than pay the extra.

To reduce my whinging (mainly at the wife) I did recently upgrade to the 1000/115 service but I've still needed to make some compromises with my cloud backup schedule and integrity checks.

Edited by PCJM40 (Wed 21-May-25 13:03:04)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

But there's the rub: the price is the massive unknown here. Given that the 1000/1000 tier has already been announced at £100+VAT per month wholesale, one has to presume that the faster tiers will be above that.

No, one doesn't. Openreach are trialing this voluntarily, they are offering the symmetrical gigabit purely because the public subsidy contract required it. The pricing is to deter anyone from selling a product Openreach don't want to provide. It is in no way a guide to the pricing of future Openreach XGSPON products they have chosen to trial.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I see the opposite.

Openreach needs to migrate users from copper to fibre, but customers won't accept being forced onto higher speeds that they don't want - and perceive that they are being forced to pay extra for.

Ok, maybe there is a point. There will be customers who will remain on copper and won't budge. Openreach will certainly need to migrate them and for this reason it is understandable that they will be offering identical asymmetric packages. But I expect this should be a short term migration phase.

The problem is that customers who for example left for another provider may not see a reason to go back to lower tier packages that Openreach are providing even if they were cheap or the same as FTTC simply because from a customer point of view if I see that I can get 150Mbps to 500Mbps for £18-£20. Why would anyone pay the same for a 40 or 80Mbps connection unless they had no other choice? Even Virgin Media M125 package can be ordered for £24 a month with £80 bill credit.

People are usually paying this for FTTC when they don't have an alternative option yet. In this scenario it is natural to assume that customers will migrate for the best value of money.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Openreach need to be able to give them a like-for-like swap, otherwise they will hang onto their copper connections for as long as possible.

Exactly that!

I didn't exactly write that, which you quoted me, unless you quoted me in an error for what you wrote.
Well, I still believe customers will migrate to FTTP. Openreach do actually have the powers to migrate customers from copper to fibre. They could simply give customers warning letters along the line "If by X amount of days you do not migrate to our Full Fibre connection, we will cancel your copper line"!

That way the customer will still have no option but to switch over to their FTTP connection to continue their service. People will panic and not want to be left without a broadband connection so they will comply!

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

But in urban areas with other Altnet offerings Openreach might have a more challenging time to get customers if they offer these asymmetric tier packages.

That doesn't make sense to me: on XGS-PON, Openreach are going to be offering symmetric packages *in addition* to the existing asymmetric tiers. So anybody who wants symmetric (and is prepared to pay whatever the price turns out to be) can get it.

But there's the rub: the price is the massive unknown here. Given that the 1000/1000 tier has already been announced at £100+VAT per month wholesale, one has to presume that the faster tiers will be above that.

I suspect that many people who whinge about "needing" symmetric will find that in reality 1000/115 meets their needs just fine, and they can let their NAS backups run overnight rather than pay the extra.

As for Openreach having a "challenging time": it's not our business to tell Openreach what their strategy should be for customer aquisition and retention.

I completely understand that Openreach are also offering symmetrical packages on XGS-PON. My point is that this naturally becomes more expensive when you offer asymmetrical services alongside symmetrical services and that becomes a problem as prices immediately jump drastically for the symmetrical packages. This is why 1000/1000 ends up costing £100 a month. Let's be honest, this isn't normal when even Virgin Media 2Gig symmetrical is £70 a month and even that's expensive.

But when you see other Altnet packages offering only symmetrical packages by default, even those lower tier symmetrical packages are immediately much better value for money. It makes sense to opt for the cheaper options elsewhere and Openreach in these particular cases will certainly lose customers to both the Altnets and even Virgin Media. Nexfibre wholesale symmetrical will also pose a challenge.

If the loss for Openreach is only 10% of the least profitable customers that should be a relief. But majority of the users are not going to pay £100 for 1000/1000 so the lower symmetrical packages will have to be competitively matched. We shall see in future what happens to the customer base. But so far UBS predicts that 800K Openreach lines will be lost in 2025 to rival networks. The question is even after the FTTP upgrades how much customers can Openreach still maintain if the packages are still going to be expensive? It is a matter for us to see over time.

Also from a customer point of view indeed 1000/115 will meet most people's needs. But people are going to ask themselves the question, "If I am buying a Big Mac, why am I receiving a Happy Meal?"
Naturally all people want to pay for what they get. They don't want to pay more for less even if that less is sufficient for their needs. For more than a decade in the UK people will be aware that they can get 1000/1000 for £25-£40 through most other Altnets as long as they were available at their premises. Even those who could afford to pay more will find it shocking to see the same package being offered at £100 a month. Just seeing this https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/02/openre... and reading the comment section of many people no one is happy with this £100 a month package. It's not a question of whether we need it and can be happy with 1000/115 it's the fact that it is disproportionately more expensive than what most of us are used to seeing.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Well, I still believe customers will migrate to FTTP. Openreach do actually have the powers to migrate customers from copper to fibre. They could simply give customers warning letters along the line "If by X amount of days you do not migrate to our Full Fibre connection, we will cancel your copper line"!

No, they don't have such power. The contractual arrangements are between the customer and the CSP, and between the CSP and Openreach.

What Openreach *could* do is give notice of termination to the CSP, who in turn would have to give notice of termination (and/or opportunity to migrate) to the customer.

However, they've been avoiding this heavy-handed approach for now, and will probably not go there for another 10 years or more. In fibre priority areas, they're not taking new copper orders; whether you move house, or change CSP, or even just want to change speed, you'll have to take FTTP. Thus they will wait for natural churn for most people to move off copper.

They've also been giving a carrot to the CSP, in the form of the Equinox/Equinox 2 deals, which offer reduced wholesale costs in return for achieving a certain level of copper to FTTP migrations.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Also from a customer point of view indeed 1000/115 will meet most people's needs.

40/10 will meet most people's needs.

The vast proportion of customers take the cheapest service available. There was some good evidence of this from Aquiss a while back; at one point they were offering 40/2, 40/10 and 80/20 (and higher speeds) on FTTP. A full 35% of users took the 40/2 offering, which was only £2 per month cheaper than 40/10. And this is on an ISP which is not at the cheap end of the market.

At the moment, what matters is what can be delivered in the £25-£30 price bracket. This is Vodafone's business model (including their early exclusivity arrangement with Cityfibre); if they can undercut the competition by even £1 per month, they get a ton of customers. And it's working.

The success of Altnets depends entirely on this segment of the market. For those people who care about gigabit-plus speeds, and they have a choice of providers, then good for them. But the vast majority do not. And what Openreach cares about is the vast majority, who are their bread and butter.

Edited by candlerb (Thu 22-May-25 13:59:49)

Of-course I wanted to mean that 1000/115 will meet most people's satisfaction even if if it's still not symmetric.
40/10 indeed meets most people's needs. Meeting most people's needs is one thing, but meeting people's satisfaction is quite another!
I'm still on 80/20 FTTC with BT and sure I admit I am more than happy for now even though I've not rushed to switch to Community Fibre yet. But I have no doubt I'll be more satisfied with a gig connection even if I don't need it fully.

But of-course it depends a lot on the price structure and offerings. If Aquiss were offering 40/20 for £2 cheaper than 40/10 then yes, even I will opt for 40/20.

Interestingly, you mentioned the same thing to me about Aquiss nearly 4 years ago in another forum topic Re: "Any use case for 3gb speed?"

But even now when I look at the price offerings, just looking at Aquiss now I see CityFibre are offering much cheaper packages than Openreach FTTP.
I just had a look at their 1Gigabit GPON symmetrical offering. First 6 months £21 a month. 21 × 6 = 126 and after that it increases to £42 a month. 42 × 6 = 252. Add both figures 252 + 126 = 378. Now if you divide 378 ÷ 12 = 31.5 So this averages £31.50 a month for a gig symmetrical package on CityFibre.

Even Full Fibre Heroes is cheaper in ratio to the Openreach wholesale packages.
These are Wholesale Altnets, they are modestly more expensive than Altnets (non wholesale) networks but still much cheaper and reasonable than Openreach wholesale current prices.

If like you say the vast majority do not have access to Altnets then that would indicate that Openreach are taking advantage of those that don't have these cheaper options available! Customers are thus stuck having to choose the minimum that meets most people's needs. This may explain why in certain areas people still choose to remain on FTTC even after Openreach FTTP rolls out. But should there be a cheaper alternative they do jump elsewhere even if 40/10 were to meet their needs.

We see this with many users of these forums sharing their experiences. They switch to Alternative 500Mbps or 1000Mbps packages despite admitting that they don't need those speeds but it is simply cheaper than what Openreach offer currently.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

If like you say the vast majority do not have access to Altnets then that would indicate that Openreach are taking advantage of those that don't have these cheaper options available!

Openreach's wholesale pricing is regulated by Ofcom - at least, the base price for 40/10 is. They can neither charge above or below this price. So if Openreach were indeed "taking advantage" it would be because they're being forced to.

In reality, Ofcom have set this pricing (a) so that Openreach can continue to invest in their network, and (b) so that Altnets have an opportunity in the marketplace, and cannot be squeezed out by Openreach lowering their prices in response.

Altnets are able to cherry pick the cheapest areas to build, and so can undercut Openreach on price.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

We see this with many users of these forums sharing their experiences. They switch to Alternative 500Mbps or 1000Mbps packages despite admitting that they don't need those speeds but it is simply cheaper than what Openreach offer currently.

I think you're agreeing with what I said. Most people don't care about speed (download or upload), but they do care very much about price. As long as their broadband is sufficient to watch a stream of Netflix and browse Amazon, then the only thing they actually care about is how cheap it is.