The Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of UK broadband operator Openreach (BT), Katie Milligan, has told Richard Tang, the CEO of ISP Zen Internet, in a new interview that there are “no plans” for a third phase of “Equinox” price discounts on FTTP broadband services “at the moment“. The operator also touches on the possibility of faster speeds, like 3Gbps, among other things.
Just to recap. Openreach’s roll-out of a new 1.8Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which is costing them up to £15bn, has already reached nearly 16 million UK premises and they’re aiming to hit 25m by December 2026 (here), before reaching up to 30 million by 2030.
The national average take-up across their network is currently sitting around 34%. But Katie noted in today’s new interview that this is now “tending toward 50%” in footprints that are 2 years old, which will no doubt be something that rival networks will remain concerned about. Speaking of which, the operator’s FTTP customer base – across multiple supporting ISPs (e.g. BT, Sky Broadband, iDNET, Vodafone, TalkTalk and many more) – is now just going over 5.5 million.
Most of Richard’s interview with Katie focuses upon the issues around getting more women into senior technology roles, although we’re naturally more focused on the network, competition and service delivery side of the discussion, which produced some interesting remarks.
For example, on Sky Broadband’s recent decision to start diversifying by harnessing CityFibre’s rival network (here), Katie says Openreach expected it to happen and then uses this to support their plan to push Ofcom for more deregulation in the forthcoming Telecoms Access Review 2026 (note: other than BT, Sky is their biggest customer).
“We always knew it would happen at some point. On a personal level, did I want it to happen? Maybe not, but the reality is it’s completely rational, and it shows that the market is working,” said Katie before adding: “When you’ve got this level of competition, actually we think there could be even further deregulation … There will be geographic areas where we will look for deregulation, very similar to what we’ve seen in the Ethernet market where there’s a central London area etc. We have to be able to compete.”
Price cuts and faster speeds
However, consumers hoping that Openreach might cut their wholesale prices on FTTP lines even further will be disappointed, since Katie re-iterated that they have no current plans for an Equinox 3 discount scheme. The prior Equinox 2 scheme, which was strongly opposed by smaller alternative networks, was cleared by Ofcom in 2023 (here). At that time the operator said they did not intend to “initiate further changes until at least 31st March 2026“, thus Katie isn’t saying anything new (the date given is after Ofcom’s next review / TAR).
“There are no plans for [Equinox 3 discounts on FTTP] at the moment. Openreach will do entirely what’s rational … but the priority for us at the moment is building the network at pace, and being the lowest cost builder and connector,” said Katie. But we always take the phrase “no plans” with a pinch of salt, since it’s easily one of the most used and abused in the PR arsenal. Plans can and often do change, frequently at short notice, although in this case it’s likely to remain true until at least April 2026.
The discussion then switched to multi-gigabit speeds. At present Openreach’s fastest consumer FTTP tier is 1.8Gbps (1800Mbps), although this is limited to uploads of 120Mbps (220Mbps for businesses). But the operator is planning to launch symmetric speeds in their Project Gigabit build areas from April 2025, which will harness 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology (here).
However, many of the operator’s rivals have already launched faster 2-3Gbps tiers, with some even reaching the 7-10Gbps territory (e.g. YouFibre, B4RN etc.). Interestingly, on this point, Katie appears to hint that the operator might be considering a future speed boost to 3Gbps, but this could equally be just a random example for the purpose of the interview. In any case, it’s all an issue of demand and flexibility to adapt.
“Do I think residential customers will be asking, in the next 5 years, I need 3Gbps? No. But they could do and the priority for us is to make sure that we’re making the investment ahead of time, so we are putting in the Combi cards (ComboPON) and building our plans for XGS-PON etc,” said Katie. “The choice for us is to have optionality as to when we switch it on. But I don’t necessarily think it will come from a customer pull. I think it will be more around having it there and then working out what the level of demand is, before rolling it out.”
Speaking of which, Katie also confirmed that their future Ethernet Access Direct 2.0 (EAD2) product for business customers and network operators, which is something we revealed a year ago (here), should finally enter the pilot phase with ISPs during 2025. This is roughly in keeping with what we reported before.
Remote rural builds
Finally, the interview switched to a focus on the challenges of building FTTP into some of the remotest rural areas, which Openreach has recently been doing commercially. But they’re set to go even deeper after scooping the larger Type C (cross-regional) build contracts under the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme (here) – reflecting up to £800m (state aid) to help upgrade 312,000 premises in remote areas of Scotland, England and Wales.
The interview also touched on the question of limits, since some locations are so remote as to currently be unviable for FTTP, even under Project Gigabit. “It will come down to individual premises, as opposed to whole areas. and then it if becomes disproportionately expensive, then we might have a discussion around whether or not there’s a handful of homes that we don’t do. But I can’t see at this point that we would be making these agreements now … we’ll work that out at the end of the decade,” said Katie.
Katie also confirmed that Openreach “didn’t bid” on the Type A and B [Project Gigabit] contracts because “they didn’t work for us … Either due to the scale of them or some of the commercial terms. We wanted to go big, just by virtue of our scale, and Type C was perfect for that.” Generally, most of the A/B contracts have been won by smaller alternative networks, as well as some larger players like CityFibre.
However, Katie also pointed out that they were still likely to build beyond the contract 312,000 premises under Type C, which is due to additionality (i.e. separately expanding coverage out via commercial investment, based on the same geographic areas passed using public investment). Put another way, rolling out into Type C areas will make some other areas viable for commercial build, which might not have been possible to reach before.
As usual, Richard Tang has managed to put together another interesting interview, which can be viewed in full below.
