Prices aren’t the only thing changing at Openreach (BT) today. The national UK network operator has also revealed that it will be withdrawing some of the “legacy” speed tiers on their Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP + FTTP on Demand) based broadband products for ISPs and their customers.
The public briefing summary on this doesn’t provide any useful information, except to confirm that they’re today notifying all Communication Providers (CP) about “legacy speed tiers being withdrawn from new supply” (here). But with a bit of cross-referencing from other documents, we were able to confirm the FTTP tiers that are due to be withdrawn.
For example, Openreach will be withdrawing both their 220Mbps / 20Mbps (download / upload) and 330Mbps / 30Mbps tiers, which isn’t surprising as both now have a comparably priced option with faster 30Mbps and 50Mbps upload speeds, respectively. The FTTP on Demand (FoD / FTTPoD) product also sees the same change, albeit excluding 220/20Mbps because it didn’t offer that in the first place.
The briefing also mentions FTTC in its title but, at the time of writing, we haven’t been able to find any new withdrawal notices on their related speed tiers and are currently attempting to clarify what changes are actually being made to those tiers.
Openreach does occasionally withdraw legacy tiers, usually due to a lack of demand by CPs (inc. end-customers) or just to help simplify their product portfolio – often a combination of both. Existing customers on the withdrawn tiers will not be impacted, as the change only impacts new service supplies.