Openreach launches discount prices for superfast broadband

Openreach as announced a number of discounts for wholesale customers, in an effort to encourage the telcos to focus more on superfast and ultrafast services.

The offer, which covers fibre-to-the-cabinet and fibre-to-the-premise wholesale services, could be as much as 40%, and is geared towards encouraging service providers to focus on their own customers, as opposed to engaging in the cut throat battle of stealing subscribers from competitors. The hope is service providers will pay more attention to the subscribers they currently have, upgrading more to superfast and ultrafast connections over the next three to five years.

“We’ve invested more than £11 billion into our network over the past decade and whilst that’s helped the UK become a global digital leader, there are still millions more homes and businesses that could benefit from the better broadband infrastructure we’ve built,” said Openreach CEO Clive Selley.

“The offer is a win/win for Communications Providers, their customers and Openreach. It will help Britain’s homes and businesses to experience the benefits of faster and more reliable broadband. And it will incentivise our wholesale customers to participate in long-term investment in digital infrastructure by upgrading more of their customers to superfast and ultrafast services.”

As it stands, 10 million homes around the UK have upgraded to superfast services, though the total could be as high as 28 million. Openreach has also quoted Ofcom research claiming an additional 4 million could upgrade for the same price or even less. Such statistics perhaps demonstrate the attitude of service providers in the UK, securing more customers is more important than keeping the ones you have happy.