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.