BT Monopoly of Fibre To The Home ?

andye14

Just found this fairly old thread when searching as my village (about 20 miles South of Preston) has just had FTTP completed as part of a pilot programme for rural villages.

I currently have FTTC which Sky define as "Superfast", I am not so sure.

The cost issue for the provider is LLU (Local Loop Unbundling). IN this case non BT operators drop their own kit into exchanges and run the connection from the exchange to their backbone (backhaul) through fibre they control themselves. The non BT ISPs who have used LLU thus only pay BTOpenreach for the connection between the exchange and your property. Non LLU providers simply white label the BT Openreach offering and sell you effectively an identical service to that BT themselves would offer. The margin on the resold BT product is presumably far lower than the margin on the LLU leveraged offering, so the ISP would make less money from reselling the BT product than they do from offering their own service via LLU. This is how LLU works.

What I wonder is why wouldn't a LLU ISP continue to use their own kit and backhaul network connected to BT FTTH? That has to be really easy to deliver technically so either a) there is no commercial product for LLU operators to take only BT FTTH only as far as the exchange, b) The ISP's would not be able to deal with the additional Bandwidth via their own networks or c) there is a lag between BT FTTH becoming available and it being available as a resold service.

I think some combo of all three may be happening.

I have Sky and would in an ideal world like to pick up the 300 Mbps, Ultrafast service that BT has just started offering this month. Sky however will not offer me anything that is faster than my current 67/80 MBPS FTTC service. However for only £4 a month extra I could move my line to BT (I rent line and Broadband from Sky and have since I moved in) and get their 300Mbps service with guaranteed service quality of 150Mbps down and 10Mbps up and over £100 in some form of cashback bung.

It looks like a no brainer but I would if possible stick with Sky if I knew I would be able to upgrade my service within a fairly short period of time. Interestingly EE (a BT Company) with whom I have my mobile lines also does not offer Ultrafast yet, which makes little sense unless they too are seeking to eke out their LLU capacity or there is indeed a lag before third party ISP's see the service as available.

What is also interesting is that all the comparison tools (including MSE) seem to think that the fastest service I can get is the 67Mbps service, whereas BT are happy to offer me 300Mbps when I go to their site and check direct

iniltous

Sky have said they will start to offer service over OR’s FTTP at some point, it will be interesting to see what price they charge...from your POV you need to decide if it’s best to wait until your preferred provider starts offering customers it ( and if the wait is worth it when they publish their prices ) or look at providers that already do offer FTTP over OR
The interconnect with Sky LLU/MPF and FTTP are ( or will be when they get around to offering it ) different, so if they migrate a customer from LLU to FTTP the chances are that the point at which the ‘traffic’ is handed over from OR to Sky will not be in the same exchange where the Sky LLU kit that currently have is...Sky will pay more in wholesale charges and will effectively be making some of their own network assets redundant, hence the reason for them being a late adopter of FTTP, sweating their current assets

andye14

I have seen from the Skyforums that they are offering apparently OR FTTP in some areas and have been for quite a few months, it is difficult to tell whether they are LLU exchanges or not without more detail.

I don't quite get the commercial driver though, if customer leave to other OR provision because Sky do not offer the same bandwidth or are slow to offer it they get zero margin, not just a reduced margin. It is a fair bet that anyone paying Sky for 67Mbps is going to want to move to 150 or 300 given the lower or negligible additional cost.

It is one thing not to promote the OR service, it is another to not offer it at all (even if it is a little under the counter). All that does surely is guarantee the loss of a broadband customer for at least 2 years?

It does have to be said my village exchange has only just gone live with FTTP so might wait a few weeks but it would be stupid to continue paying a similar amount for a vastly inferior non guaranteed service for more than a few weeks wouldn't it?

[Deleted User]

andye14 wrote: »

...I have Sky and would in an ideal world like to pick up the 300 Mbps, Ultrafast service that BT has just started offering this month. Sky however will not offer me anything that is faster than my current 67/80 MBPS FTTC service. However for only £4 a month extra I could move my line to BT (I rent line and Broadband from Sky and have since I moved in) and get their 300Mbps service with guaranteed service quality of 150Mbps down and 10Mbps up and over £100 in some form of cashback bung...

...What is also interesting is that all the comparison tools (including MSE) seem to think that the fastest service I can get is the 67Mbps service, whereas BT are happy to offer me 300Mbps when I go to their site and check direct

andye14 wrote: »

...I don't quite get the commercial driver though, if customer leave to other OR provision because Sky do not offer the same bandwidth or are slow to offer it they get zero margin, not just a reduced margin. It is a fair bet that anyone paying Sky for 67Mbps is going to want to move to 150 or 300 given the lower or negligible additional cost...

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but Sky Superfast (average 67Mbps) is available for £29 a month including an Anytime calls package (probable cashback deals, I haven't looked). BT Ultrafast (average 300Mbps) FTTP seems to be £49.99 with a £100 reward card which is around £42 a month (there doesn't appear to be any other cashback deals for it).

Where do you get this £4 difference from?

The online comparison tools possibly haven't been updated yet if the village has only recently been upgraded.

Edit:- I'm basing my BT price off https://www.thinkbroadband.com/packages/fttp-broadband since BT don't seem to like talking about it.

JJ_Egan

Thats what BT show £49.99

https://www.bt.com/broadband/deals


Was around £60 pm .


Or negotiate for 80/20 FTTP at a lower price .

andye14

Colin_Maybe wrote: »

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but Sky Superfast (average 67Mbps) is available for £29 a month including an Anytime calls package (probable cashback deals, I haven't looked). BT Ultrafast (average 300Mbps) FTTP seems to be £49.99 with a £100 reward card which is around £42 a month (there doesn't appear to be any other cashback deals for it).

Where do you get this £4 difference from?

The online comparison tools possibly haven't been updated yet if the village has only recently been upgraded.

Edit:- I'm basing my BT price off (xxx) since BT don't seem to like talking about it.

I currently pay Sky £46 inclusive of line rental (I don't have any BT products) for Sky Fibre Max and Phone.

I have been more interested in keeping my options flexible than saving money so haven't switched to a lower tariff even though they are now available.

So the difference for me is only £4 from what I am currently paying.

[Deleted User]

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Thats what BT show £49.99

https://www.bt.com/broadband/deals


Was around £60 pm .


Or negotiate for 80/20 FTTP at a lower price .

Ahh, I checked what was available here first and since it's not they only show Superfast Fibre & SF Fibre Essential for me.

[Deleted User]

andye14 wrote: »

I currently pay Sky £46 inclusive of line rental (I don't have any BT products) for Sky Fibre Max and Phone.

I have been more interested in keeping my options flexible than saving money so haven't switched to a lower tariff even though they are now available.

So the difference for me is only £4 from what I am currently paying.

Well that's one way of looking at it

Through the checker above the Sky Superfast + calls package is actually just £27 a month.