Crystal Ball Gazing - Openreach roll-out of XGS-PON

So who has their crystal ball under control?

I wonder how long it will be before the Openreach XGS-PON trial concludes; what that will mean for a roll-out; how rapid it will be; and how expensive faster circuits will end up being

Any predictions?

The full launch will be this year, expecting q3 or q4 of this year. Q4 is more likely, just so that isps are ready .... OR have been sitting on combo pon for age now so the bean counters will want to see a return on that.

Price wise i'm expecting 5% to 15% more on the openreach pricing. Isp pricing who knows.

Price-wise, I'm expecting it not to undercut existing products.

At wholesale, the prices are currently:

£71.23+VAT for 500/165
£77.70+VAT for 1000/220
£103.60+VAT for 1000/1000 (in the very limited areas it's available)

I would not expect XGS-PON services faster than 1800/120(*) to undercut these. Why not? Because Openreach aren't competing with altnets; they're competing primarily with themselves for business services, and these FTTP services are priced to be low-cost leased lines.

It's in Openreach's interest to allow altnets a moderate proportion of market share (say 10% of total customer base), because having a market which appears to work means lower regulation from OFCOM. If Openreach were to crush the altnets, they'd be back to being a tightly regulated monopoly.

Those people who have Openreach connections and expecting to get cheap symmetric broadband for £5-£10 per month more than you're currently paying: I expect you will be sorely disappointed. I don't think you'll even be able to buy it through a retail ISP. Note that BT Retail and BT Business don't even sell the 500/165 and 1000/220 tiers today, despite Openreach making them available across the whole FTTP footprint.

I would expect existing tiers including 1000/115 and 1800/120 to be priced the same on XGS-PON; consumers don't care what technology delivers their broadband, and it gives OR the option to install XGS-PON ONTs as standard in areas that support it.

I suspect that with XGS-PON they'll use higher split ratios of 128:1, at least in new build areas. That's where the real ROI is for Openreach: one quarter the number of ports means one quarter of the amount of rack space and less power. Not faster services.

(*) 1800/120 is £44.23+VAT at standard wholesale pricing. I don't know if there is Equinox pricing for this tier.

Edited by candlerb (Thu 28-May-26 08:48:35)

From the current beta pricing there is no overlap between gpon and xgspon. Given that Gpon installs should be now "free bar maintence cost and any yearly license costs etc* " They might as well keep gpon there. The ideal sitatuion is a combo pon ont - so you install and forget!

* = obviously for 1 to 2 year installs its not "free". I don't know their break even point for an area. Since each pon has a different build cost.

gpon will become the new "adsl". Entry level.

As for higher split levels, wouldn't it complicate things if they had two different levels of spliting -ie 1/32 for gpon and 1/64 or 1/128 for xgspon?

Regarding pricing, Or will want the 800k lines they lost back, so there will be competive pricing, but not to much to kill their other "business products"

The other thing is, years ago somebody said(isp) it cost them more to send say 10gbytes at 100mbits than at 5mbits, even though it would take longer. obviously that was down to hardware costs and cablelink costs etc. Whilst still there now, it only becomes noticable, at 50gbits(could argue its really at 100gbits)+ simply because of the costs of running more expensive equipment (i know that you understand that) but for those who don't its important to understand costings.

In regards to rack costs and power, i suspect the sfp modules will be more power hungry just like rj45 sfp(+) modules are. The comments about 1/4 if went to 1/128 would only work if it was xgspon only .. Not sure if gpon can do 128 ( can look but cba -😂 ).

keeping to combo pon probably saves them more than a 1/4 reduction.

Even though i think moving to premium care levels that can applied to any product would make far more sense then to charge for base products. But lets see how they tackle xgs and the altnet

The big problem to work anything out is that if we (any tbber) went to a data centre and installed the same equipment into a rack the costs will be higher etc. That part is obvious. But those costings are highly sensitive information to OR, The alt nets could do a good guess but their price model is to undercut OR, so they will run their systems to the cheapest possible .

Edited by Taras (Thu 28-May-26 09:56:36)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

(*) 1800/120 is £44.23+VAT at standard wholesale pricing. I don't know if there is Equinox pricing for this tier.

I think there is due to the price reduction on some 1800 products.

In reply to a post by Taras:

Or will want the 800k lines they lost back

No, that's the point - they don't. They're much better off running with 90% of users and light-touch regulation, than having 100% of the users and much more onerous regulation.

EDIT: BT's public view here.

“we’ll have a smaller market share, but it’ll be a more valuable modern-day asset that delivers a much better customer experience … even with that lower market share”

Edited by candlerb (Thu 28-May-26 10:27:38)

In reply to a post by Taras:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

(*) 1800/120 is £44.23+VAT at standard wholesale pricing. I don't know if there is Equinox pricing for this tier.

I think there is due to the price reduction on some 1800 products.

Yes, you are right. Equinox 2 price list shows 1.8G at £23.28 or £20.70+VAT, depending on whether ARPU targets are met.

That's only a few pence more than gigabit, so gives the CSPs an opportunity to sell a "premium" service at a higher profit margin.

The prices for 500/165, 1000/220 and 1000/1000 are out of line with the 1000/110 and below products.
I would expect the symmetric and higher speed products to become more mainstream, but would they at these prices?

I personally would pay more for a symmetric 1000 connection; ideally I'd go a bit faster but I don't really need it - more because I have a 10gb internal core in my home-lab so I'm ready for it

In reply to a post by Jabes:

The prices for 500/165, 1000/220 and 1000/1000 are out of line with the 1000/110 and below products.
I would expect the symmetric and higher speed products to become more mainstream, but would they at these prices?

Remember that the 1g/1gbit offering was more a contractual thing for the type c bduk project gigabit areas. I'd be surprised if there's actually even 5 connections.

The pricing structure will need to change. But to what

In reply to a post by Jabes:

I personally would pay more for a symmetric 1000 connection; ideally I'd go a bit faster but I don't really need it - more because I have a 10gb internal core in my home-lab so I'm ready for it

I'd rather have 1g/1gb than 2.5g/220mbit if it was the same price.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Taras:

Or will want the 800k lines they lost back

No, that's the point - they don't. They're much better off running with 90% of users and light-touch regulation, than having 100% of the users and much more onerous regulation.

EDIT: BT's public view here.

“we’ll have a smaller market share, but it’ll be a more valuable modern-day asset that delivers a much better customer experience … even with that lower market share”

from the same article

But equally, BT’s boss noted that they’ve still “got to be competitive, rather than just accept that every line we can lose forever“.

i think i should have said - they will want some of their 800k lost lines back. i think that they will have to be competitive with xgs pon baring the 5g and 8g products.

Note, I'm sorta being lazy with the speed terminology party because its hot and also we aren't talking about anything else.