The Openreach virtual dark fibre service finally sees the light of day

Six months after proposing a compromise between full dark fibre access and full managed service, Openreach has formally launched ‘virtual dark fibre’.

The proper name for this fibre wholesale service is Optical Spectrum Access Filter Connect and the thinking behind it was explained to us by Openreach General Manager of High Bandwidth and Passive Services, Darren Wallington, in October of last year. In essence it aims to combine the service assurance and response times of a managed service with the scalability and flexibility sought from dark fibre access.

“We’ve re-engineered our high-bandwidth optical services to give our wholesale customers far greater flexibility at a fantastic price,” said Wallington. “OSA Filter Connect allows providers to grow their needs affordably, at their own pace and using their choice of innovative equipment.

“By innovating a virtual dark fibre service, we can give customers that extra flexibility whilst still being able to monitor our network and respond to faults and issues proactively. With a regulated dark fibre access product, we would’ve literally been left in the dark with no monitoring capabilities and significantly longer service interruptions due to the reactive nature of fault reporting, but this means we can commit to a national five-hour response time.”

Pricing seems to be one of the things Openreach has worked on a fair bit on the last six months, much of which have been spent in what Openreach characterizes as ‘proper, constructive engagement’ with UK stakeholders. Additionally it has received a significantly increased level of direct lobbying from MNOs, keen to get ahead of the game on 5G fronthaul and backhaul.

“We’ve listened closely to our customers,” said Wallington. “They wanted something that would address the perceived failings of a ‘one size fits all’ regulated product and they’ve helped us to shape the product we’re launching”

“Both large and small customers told us they wanted a service that offered more competitive high bandwidth pricing with low incremental scaling costs. They also wanted more flexible and configurable services that give them more control, the ability to support fast evolving technology – like synchronization, and more efficient use of space and power.”

It’s not for us to say whether or not this is the right solution to the dark fibre access issue, but it does seem like a good-faith attempt by Openreach to balance a number of different factors and needs. We’ve copied the new pricing tables below to help you make up your own mind.

*Pricing – OSA filter connect prices below, note the 5 year term variant is less than our original consultation range

This provides CPs with a 10GB managed service with spare filter ports that they can use to scale to higher bandwidth by themselves with no additional costs from Openreach. We will continue to offer additional Managed Wavelengths for those CP’s who prefer a managed service at very competitive price points.

* Can be upgraded to 20Gb without a site visit

EAD 10Gb will see connection prices reduced by up to 32% and rentals by up to 53%

At the same time the 5 year term variant will now in effect make be a 3 year term product, as we’ve set the early termination charges for Year 4 and 5 to zero.

Dual Fibre mainlink, the headline rate will be reduced from 37.2p to 24p