Broadband News
News, views and analysis
BT tweaks wholesale broadband pricing
11 Nov 2008 | 20.11 Europe/London
BT have issued notification of Wholesale price changes that will take effect on Dec 1st and Jan 1st 2009.
There are many changes, both up and down, some examples are :-
A 5% increase in the annual rental of a fixed speed end user IPStream connection to £8.01 per month (ex VAT, Wholesale) from 1/12/08.
A 4.1% decrease in the equivalent IPStream Max end user link rental to £6.72 from New Year's day.
Presumably the intent here is to provide an incentive for Service Providers to move to the rate adaptive Max products from the fixed speeds.
Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) lines get a New Year present of a 4.70% reduction in monthly rental to £5.88/month (ex VAT, Wholesale) in the dense urban / high competition markets, with the less competitive markets reducing by 3.65%.
The above charges relate to the end user link, in the case of IPStream there is also a per user bandwidth charge on the BT Central product which will reduce by 30% to 87p per end user per month from 1/12/08.
The "big ticket" item in the BT IPstream product is the large Central connection from BT to the ISP. The 622Mbits/s L2TP product will *increase* in price by 24.2% to an eye-watering £1.029m pa from 1/12/08 however for those that can afford them there is a sweetener in that the £175k connection charge is being waived for the next 6 months.
To give a little context to these numbers, a retail ISP might provide say 40 kbits/s per user on average, so a 622M Central serves 15,500 end users making the monthly cost of the Central £5.51 per month ex VAT wholesale, making the BT Wholesale cost elements of a retail IPStream Max connection £6.72 rental + £0.87 bandwidth + £5.51 Central rental = £11.89 per month ex VAT before any internet transit, support and other ISP charges.
Cheaper ISPs using BT Wholesale will provide less than 40 kbits/s per user on average and hence save perhaps £2-2.65/month on the Central by taking it up towards its maximum 30,000 user capacity.
In general the changes appear to be intended to make the newer products more competitive than the legacy products and continue to favour low cost end user links with the higher cost being in providing bandwidth. While this will favour the "pile them high, sell them cheap" ISPs it doesn't do much for those intent on providing users with higher bandwidth or larger monthly GB allowances.
There are many changes, both up and down, some examples are :-
A 5% increase in the annual rental of a fixed speed end user IPStream connection to £8.01 per month (ex VAT, Wholesale) from 1/12/08.
A 4.1% decrease in the equivalent IPStream Max end user link rental to £6.72 from New Year's day.
Presumably the intent here is to provide an incentive for Service Providers to move to the rate adaptive Max products from the fixed speeds.
Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) lines get a New Year present of a 4.70% reduction in monthly rental to £5.88/month (ex VAT, Wholesale) in the dense urban / high competition markets, with the less competitive markets reducing by 3.65%.
The above charges relate to the end user link, in the case of IPStream there is also a per user bandwidth charge on the BT Central product which will reduce by 30% to 87p per end user per month from 1/12/08.
The "big ticket" item in the BT IPstream product is the large Central connection from BT to the ISP. The 622Mbits/s L2TP product will *increase* in price by 24.2% to an eye-watering £1.029m pa from 1/12/08 however for those that can afford them there is a sweetener in that the £175k connection charge is being waived for the next 6 months.
To give a little context to these numbers, a retail ISP might provide say 40 kbits/s per user on average, so a 622M Central serves 15,500 end users making the monthly cost of the Central £5.51 per month ex VAT wholesale, making the BT Wholesale cost elements of a retail IPStream Max connection £6.72 rental + £0.87 bandwidth + £5.51 Central rental = £11.89 per month ex VAT before any internet transit, support and other ISP charges.
Cheaper ISPs using BT Wholesale will provide less than 40 kbits/s per user on average and hence save perhaps £2-2.65/month on the Central by taking it up towards its maximum 30,000 user capacity.
In general the changes appear to be intended to make the newer products more competitive than the legacy products and continue to favour low cost end user links with the higher cost being in providing bandwidth. While this will favour the "pile them high, sell them cheap" ISPs it doesn't do much for those intent on providing users with higher bandwidth or larger monthly GB allowances.
Once again a rip off for the Market 1 exchange customers who are also at the back of the queue for WBC upgrades.
Abuse of market dominance anyone?
22 Apr 2010 | 09.04 Europe/London