Ofcom refuses to bite over Openreach's fiber freebies Ofcom has declined to intervene after smaller network providers complained that a special upgrade offer from Openreach could threaten competition in the broadband market. The UK's communications watchdog said it does not have "prima facie" concerns that would warrant investigating the offer from Openreach, the infrastructure …
Probably because it's a double-edged sword; customers might get a cheap upgerde but they'll have to deal with Openreach which could add them to the "never again, I don't care what the alternative costs" bucket.
Interesting that the offer "applies solely to successful FTTP installations". Maybe Openreach has started to become self aware
That stop sale policy is problematic.
So if a consumer for whatever reason wishes to obtain fixed line broadband service 25% of the premises will have a conversation along the lines of:
"We can't provide dsl as we have a fibre only policy in your area"
"Oh okay then, can I order a fibre broadband option then please?"
Err, no. We can't provide you with fibre broadband"
Something something joined up thinking..
An elderly relative moved house just over a year ago to a 'new' estate on the other side of the same town (two hours away from us). House is two or three years old. Not having a smart phone or a computer she had a Copper line installed, her number transferred and all seemed fine until nine months later when the phone was cut off without warning.
Entirely BT's fault as they had been sending bills (this relative used to pay at the Post Office or post a cheque) to the old addess. Presumably that is where the demand letters went as well.
We have helped said relative pay the debt and after a heck of a lot of faffing about managed to get BT to recognise us as additional administrators but nearly six months after being cut off the phone line still does not work. BT says "we cannot provide service to this address"! There is still dial tone.
There is also a fibre and an ONT (no power supply) in the house, possibly there since the place was built, certainly there before my relative moved in. "No, we cannot provide fibre service to that address".
The websites of all the other providers we have tried say the same thing, and the call centres of the ones we have telephoned say the same thing.
No amount of shouting about "Universal Service Obligation" works, with their best suggestion so far being "try Virgin". Virgin has no infrastructure of its own in the area.
The latest is from a "senior manager". "Our database shows we can supply fibre to <list of dozen neighbours> but not to the property in question."
We have given said relative an old Doro phone, but she finds it difficult to use and it has a poor signal inside the house so even when she does answer, the call often drops.
Hair-tearing!
AIUI the stop sell is only where FTTP is available. ie if so, you won't be able to order FTTC or ADSL. If no FTTP is available then you can still order whatever connection you have.
I think in stop sell areas contract renewals will also push people into FTTP where they have it. Not sure what happens to people who are on rolling contacts who never re-contract.
That's my understanding as well.
If you are in a stop-sell exchange area, then they won't supply a new copper based phone line, but if you cannot yet get fibre they will supply SOGEA - basically FTTC without a copper backhaul to the exchange. We have it at church - IP for the internet, but no dial tone (and as we don't need a phone, we haven't taken the digital voice option.) I think sooner or later they'll be getting in touch to switch - I've noticed fibre going in around the area.
I don't understand how one provider can only offer an asymetric connection, but another offer a symetric connection?
I used to be on 500down/150up, then my provider was bought out and my connection went to 500/500 (for the same cost) without any notice.
I'm not complaining at all, but did this change require new equipment down the line or would it have been ready but not 'turned on'?
On xDSL there are very good technical reasons for asymmetric connections - there's limited bandwidth and there's a tradeoff between how much you give to upstream vs. downstream. As most users want more downstream, that's what the standard offerings give. With ADSL2, there's an annex-M option (some of our clients at a previous employer used it) which changes the tradeoff to give more upstream at the expense of downstream.
Once you get to fibre, there isn't that same technical restriction. I suspect that there may be some tradeoff* at the upper limits of service speeds, but otherwise it's purely marketing. Whether there are any hardware implications (specifically manufacturers cashing in on ISP marketers' wishes to knock some fraction of a penny off the cost of a port) I don't know. But the fibre itself shouldn't have any problem carrying symmetric traffic.
* I stand to be corrected, but I believe the system OpenRetch are using is time division multiplex (TDM.) That means each subscriber gets to send/receive traffic for only part of the time - so ignoring overheads etc for simplicity, 32 users sharing a fibre back to the cabinet/exchange would get 1/64th of the time each, and needing a 64G port at the head end to support 32x1G connections. There may be frequency division multiplexing (FDM) between send and receive - that would change it to each user having 1/32nd of a 32G connection. If someone has a link to a good reference on this ...
“ Depends entirely on the line and equipment.”
A few years back I know Glide operated different terminations for their asymmetric and symmetrical services. To switch required both a change of SFP modules and customer premises router (Zyxel to Juniper), once on the Juniper router we then had a lot of flexibility - within limits on the line configuration. Hence would not be surprised if your line change was just a software setting change. Although given the savings to be had by the ISP in bulk buying, I’m a little surprised your original routers asymmetric fibre interface module, could handle the change to support a faster symmetric service.
I suppose this bundling flexibility is one of the reasons why the operators don’t really like customers directly connecting their own equipment to the fibre.
These kinds of offers really annoy me. Discounted for N months. So what am I supposed to do after N months? Go to someone else? Or pay your over-inflated price going forwards (over-inflated probably to subsidise the next poor sod to sign-up for your N months discount)? Is not like after N months, I’m going to think “oh that’s ok. I doubt need it any more”
Can’t you just give me a bloody price and stick to it? You know, like BT (and before that, the post office) used to do many years ago
I wish ofcom would put something in place to make this happen. It would make it all much more transparent, improve competition, and be overall cheaper for the consumer
Wholeheartedly agree. Every provider seems to be doing this. Just cancelled my Vodafone-on-cityfibre 900 megabit service because of their pricing games, went from approx £30 to £40 at end of contract (and even that is allegedly a special deal, the undiscounted price is £60-somthing). And no doubt my new provider will pull the same trick in 18 months.
And their stupid in-contract price rises of £3 per year - so 10 percent! Just give me the same price that new customers get, raise it by inflation every year, and I'll be your customer forever!
Ofcom should ban time-limited discounts, the whole point of which is to rinse customers too busy to notice the price increase.
I pay a lot for internet (I'm with Orange France), but the price is the price and it's been the price for years. Why does it change? Why does it go up? Do your bytes flow faster when you pay more?
Actually, I think the more likely case is that everybody paying the "inflation increase" without noticing helps to offset the headline price they offer for only X months.
I think few have a problem with the price going up roughly in line with inflation - if the supplier's costs have gone up, it's not unreasonable for the price to go up as well to suit.
It's the "inflation + X" type of stuff they used to do, and these days "discounted for X then it rockets" type of deal that pis"really irritates people".
As long as you’ve had the foresight not to make heavy use of an email address associated with your broadband supplier you absolutely can say “no thanks” and migrate elsewhere (and I know a number of people who’ve successfully done so without significant interruption). The worst thing that can happen is that you end up with multiple grey boxes tacked to the outside of your house….
£26/month for Gigaclear 500/500Mb How?
£43/month for Gigaclear 300/300Mb is the best I could get last time I tried earlier this year (after ringing up and getting a discount) - but then they are the only pony in town as BT refused (even with BDUK money and me personally meeting the regional manager, to upgrade our village).
The infrastructure costs the same to run once it is installed (and our build cost was paid off over 9 years ago - I know because I was heavily involved in it), so why is it cheaper in some places than others?
OFCOM ought to be looking at this as well as stopping the introductory offers for switching (which of course most Gigaclear customers cannot do as there is no competition.)
Having worked in Telecoms competing against BT as the incumbent for much of my working life, this does not surprise me at all, but shows again that Ofcom has BT in its various guises running rings round it.
The regulatory Laissez Faire attitude is problematic for one major reason: You cannot reverse time.
So, if you wait and see whether some anticompetitive practice is damaging - the damage will be done. And this is death by a thousand cuts - I have lost count how many times something was argued not to be damaging at all - only for reality to catch up and prove the opposite.
We need a stronger regulator with a bit of foresight who will be able to identify these kinds of issues and then set/enforce equitable principles and rules for the benefit of the wider market.
Absolutely. I too have been on the sidelines for a long time - some of it as an end user, some of it managing services for clients. Remember when ISDN-2 had a £400 install fee, and they did a £200 limited time offer. Rumour had it that they had a very big order, but the rules prevented them offering a discount to one customer - so they made it a national offer.
To be fair, the regulator does have a bit of a tricky line to walk. Too restrictive and they are accused of helping to keep prices too high for end users. Too lax and they are accused of allowing the incumbent to damage competitors. I think these two area overlap somewhat in the middle - so they can be accused of both at the same time.
Looking back to when ADSL arrived round our way. For a long time it looked like we would not get anywhere near BTs target for expressions of interest - for a while I kept checking the numbers on their website and putting posters up at work encouraging people to sign up. For a long time, price was a disincentive - ADSL cost a lot more than using dial-up. I recall getting a flyer through the post from an outfit who could offer a 2Mbps symmetric service over 2 copper pairs - and IIRC the price wasn't bad. Then BT slashed ADSL prices - good for most end users/consumers, but pulled the rug from under said alternative outfit as their offering was now sufficiently more expensive than ADSL that I suspect they would fail to reach a critical take up. I never heard any more from them.
Was the regulator right to allow the massive price cuts ? Hard to say how things would have panned out if they hadn't - it killed off a few potential other offerings (e.g. 2Mbps symmetric without charging two arms and two legs), but it massively increased uptake of ADSL and benefitted lots of consumers.
