In reply to a post by MCM:

Not to forget the shared trunking, poles (for those fed overhead), manholes, premises, etc. FTTP users need to contribute towards those costs in the same way as everybody else.

Think to be honest it's more down to the desire to keep the price of FTTP the same as that of FTTC at the lower levels.

It has nothing to do with Openreach. It is a marketing decision which is little different from selling cars with bundled service contracts or warranties. When competition focuses on headline prices for one good or service the price may be driven to a level where suppliers cannot cover their full costs. So suppliers bundle other services on which they can make a decent margin. Ultimately the real competition is between different bundles rather than a menu from which customers can choose without constraint.

Either you get what may seem to be an expensive FTTP service or a cheap FTTP service with mandatory line rental. The end cost is more or less the same after adjusting for the cost of adding a basic Voip phone service. In this case you can't blame upstream providers like OR for the way in which retailers respond to the behaviour of customers.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

There's always going to be a component of the cost that covers maintenance of the cable and head-end equipment. Last I heard the cost of providing a voice service was a couple of quid a month so that would suggest a minimum fee of £10pcm with the costs of providing a data service on top of that.

Yet if you take a copper line with it that cost of maintenance of the fibre cable and headend equipment suddenly doesn't exist. Strange that.

Not really that strange. It's just accounting and marketing departments running the numbers. they've perhaps decided that since people will see it as one line it would damage the market if they tried to charge double line rental.

Just because they don't charge double for two things doesn't mean that one of them has no cost.

Edited by Andrue (Sat 12-Jul-14 17:48:55)

@RobertoS

Unfortunately on Plusnet FTTP, you must maintain a working OR phone line as part of the T&C's of the FTTP trial. No naked fttp here. And if you don't pay Plusnet for the phone, they increase your costs by £2.50 a month.

Also, Plusnet is very much a trial FTTP and given how many years it has been going and how few customers they have on it, I'm concerned for the future. There is no timetable for the end of the trial or its change to a main stream product.

If I leave Plusnet then I have to pay a cancellation charge on the FTTP and the options of who to go to are limited for the service. It is amazing how much your bandwidth usage goes up when the DSL link can do more than 1 thing at a time. On ADSL we used a maximum of 16GB a month and now it is a minimum of 250GB.

Yes, I wasn't suggesting Plusnet would do it without a "phone" line. Just that they may not insist on the line being with them. Don't forget, I was replying to the OP thinking of getting a cheapo line .

With BT he would have a big fight not to take theirs. Though I have heard of them taking people on broadband only (not on fibre so far as I know) who are mid-term elsewhere for phone.

Hi RobertoS,

thanks for reply, that's what he is looking at doing at the mo as line rental at other places is £16 upwards, so it would be cheaper to get the cheapo phone line for £8.50 and then pay say Zen the extra £4.50 (for not taking out line rental with them).

So

that would come to £38 a month (going with the Zen 80/20 option)

If he did Zen for both then it's £42 a month

BT works out £42 a month as well

So he would be saving £4 a month for doing it with the cheapo line rental as it would only be needed for BB (well obviously it's not really needed for what will be his connection but he has to take it out anyway).

I'm with AAISP myself and they are great but he watches quite a lot of netflix and would go over 100gb easy so they are not really an option unfortunately.

Thanks again.

Do Zen do FTTP? It does talk about it in their T & Cs, but on the same page says that fibre broadband services are rate adaptive, which FTTP isn't.

In reply to a post by gah789:

It has nothing to do with Openreach. It is a marketing decision which is little different from selling cars with bundled service contracts or warranties. When competition focuses on headline prices for one good or service the price may be driven to a level where suppliers cannot cover their full costs. So suppliers bundle other services on which they can make a decent margin. Ultimately the real competition is between different bundles rather than a menu from which customers can choose without constraint.

Either you get what may seem to be an expensive FTTP service or a cheap FTTP service with mandatory line rental. The end cost is more or less the same after adjusting for the cost of adding a basic Voip phone service. In this case you can't blame upstream providers like OR for the way in which retailers respond to the behaviour of customers.

Err Openreach pricing is exactly to blame. They're the ones who add the premium for not taking a voice service.

That was my thought also, as if Zen start doing FTTP at the same pricing as their unlimited FTTC then that opens up market a fair bit i.e. that is newsworthy

I have no doubt you will come back with the answer .

It would certainly get it a lot of recommendations here.