BT Regulatory News (BT.A)

1 July 2021

Openreach announces special offer for Communications Providers to drive adoption of Full Fibre broadband

Openreach has announced a special offer for its wholesale Communications Provider (CP) customers which gives them long-term price certainty on its FTTP (Fibre-to-the-Premises) technology. Openreach is seeking to drive widespread adoption of ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband.

The new offer has been developed after extensive engagement with its customers and aims to encourage adoption of the new technology through the following set of principles:

· Commitment: where CPs choose to purchase from Openreach they commit to using FTTP wherever it's available (including new provides and technology regrades) - rather than older services such as those based on Fibre-to-the-Cabinet or purely copper technology - with no volume or migration targets.

· Pricing certainty: Openreach will give pricing certainty for up to 10 years in return for this 'stop-sell' commitment

· Simplicity: A single national rental price will apply to the entire Openreach FTTP footprint

· Competitive prices: Prices will be competitive whilst offering a fair return for Openreach. CPs can tailor offers across a range of speed tiers and take-up of higher bandwidths will be encouraged with further rebates, whilst pricing is set by Ofcom on the lowest speed tier (40Mbps upstream, 10Mbps downstream).

The offer will be open for participation between 1st October 2021 and 30th March 2022. The long-term pricing certainty will last until 30th September 2031 and be available across the entire FTTP footprint. Discounts are available to CPs where they choose to place new orders with Openreach and commit to making a percentage of those on the FTTP network, where available.

Katie Milligan, Managing Director of Customer, Commercials and Propositions at Openreach said: "Nobody's building Full Fibre broadband faster, further, or at a higher quality than Openreach, and we're well on track to reach 25 million premises by December 2026.

"At the same time we're determined to make Full Fibre the default option for customers throughout the UK, so we've been working closely with Communications Providers to offer simple and competitive pricing which gives them the long-term certainty and flexibility they need.

"We believe this offer makes Full Fibre a must-have for every home and business, and it means more people could start benefitting from our most revolutionary and reliable broadband sooner."

More than one million homes and businesses have now ordered ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband over the Openreach network. BT is investing £15 billion to build the gigabit-capable technology to 25 million UK premises by December 2026 and it's making the technology available to 43k premises every week, with more than five million homes and businesses already able to place an order.

For pricing, see 'Notes to Editors' below and full terms & conditions of the special offer are provided on our web site.

-ENDS-

For further information

Enquiries about this story can be made to the Openreach PR team on 020 7809 7950 or email: press@openreach.co.uk.

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Notes to Editors

Pricing [Simplified version]

- *Area 2 is a new "potentially competitive area" definition (part of the Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review 2021-26) that generally reflects locations where one or more existing alternative ultrafast networks are already present or where one or more operators have a plan to deploy (and Ofcom considers the future rollout could be economic).

- Further terms & conditions apply.

About Openreach 

Openreach Limited is the UK's digital network business.

We're more than 35,000 people, working in every community to connect homes, schools, shops, banks, hospitals, libraries, mobile phone masts, broadcasters, governments and businesses - large and small - to the world.

Our mission is to build the best possible network, with the highest quality service, making sure that everyone in the UK can be connected.

We work on behalf of more than 665 communications providers like BT, SKY, TalkTalk, Vodafone, and Zen, and our broadband network is the biggest in the UK, passing more than 31.8m premises.

Over the last decade we've invested more than £15 billion into our network and, at more than 190 million kilometres - it's now long enough to wrap around the world 4,798 times.

Today we're building an even faster, more reliable and future-proof broadband network which will be the UK's digital platform for decades to come. We're making progress towards our full fibre optic network target to reach 25 million premises by December 2026. Research shows a nationwide Full Fibre network could potentially provide a £59bn boost to UK productivity.

To help build the new fibre network and deliver better service across the country - we've created and filled more than 9,000 apprenticeship roles in the last two years and we're recruiting another 1,000 trainee roles in Openreach in 2021. We're also building greener - we operate the UK's second largest commercial fleet and want to help lead the transition to electric vehicles, with a target to transition our fleet to being electric in 2030. 

Openreach is a highly regulated, wholly owned, and independently governed unit of the BT Group. More than 90 per cent of our revenues come from services that are regulated by Ofcom and any company can access our products under equivalent prices, terms and conditions.

For the year ended 31 March 2021, we reported revenue of £5,244m. 

For more information, visit www.openreach.co.uk