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Zen announces FTTP pricing
Thursday 17 November 2011 16:28:41 by Andrew Ferguson

Following closely on the heels of the price announcement for the full fibre product from BT Retail, Zen has announced its Fibre Enterprise package aimed at businesses and home workers.

The fibre to the premises (FTTP/FTTH) service will initially only be available on four of the exchanges that Openreach has its FTTH product, expanding to seven by the end of year. Two product variants are available, Enterprise a 100 Mbps download, 15 Mbps upload package with 500 GB download allowance for £70+VAT, and Enterprise+ which doubles upload speeds to 30 Mbps for £95+VAT a month.

Obviously the service is considerably more expensive than the BT Infinity Option 3 service, and is not unlimited, but Option 3 is not currently available to businesses and there will be home workers who value the lack of traffic management and other aspects of Zen's service.

Compared to ten years ago, the progress is astounding, since a 0.5 Mbps service which meant a maximum allowance of 150 GB if ran flat out 24/7/31 costed £50 then to get a product that is 200 times faster and allows for triple the usage level.

At this time the Enterprise products have not made it onto the Zen website, only PC Pro appears to have the pricing.

[ Topic: Internet Service Providers | 19 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by epyon 6 months ago
Awesome :)

Posted by James1o1o 6 months ago
Why do ISP's even have download allowances still? Almost all ISP's say only 1% of users use more than 30gb or whatever they claim, why bother capping it for that 1% then? Surely we must have reached the stage in technology where they can handle a few people downloading?

Posted by Apilar 6 months ago
Bandwidth isn't free, especially when you have to pay BT a load of £££ for it.

Posted by cyberdoyle 6 months ago
Go Team Zen.

Posted by andrew ( staff member) 6 months ago
It is not just BT, inside data centres when BT are not involved it costs money.

Posted by Vivaciti 6 months ago
Data costs money, and if it's going through BT kit that makes the data very expensive.

Posted by orly2 6 months ago
pricey...

Posted by camieabz 6 months ago
"Compared to ten years ago, the progress is astounding, since a 0.5 Mbps service which meant a maximum allowance of 150 GB if ran flat out 24/7/31 costed £50 then to get a product that is 200 times faster and allows for triple the usage level."

Also factor in that the purchasing power of your pound has dropped since then.

Posted by Rocklett 6 months ago
James1o1o BT Wholesale charge ISPs £48.55 PER Mb/sec PER MONTH, an FTTP line can use up to 100Mb/sec (actually 110) so a user could run up a bandwidth bill on behalf of the ISP of almost 5 grand every month.

Funnily enough I don't wander why ISPs have bandwidth limits, I wonder how long BTW are going to get away with this.

P.S. the end user could cause a bill that high without running flat out all month simply by running at maximum at the same time as the ISPs peak usage occurs as ISPs have to buy bandwidth to cope with the peaks.

Posted by otester 6 months ago
@Rocklett

As long as we keep voting in politicians that keep using quick fixes for complex issues.

Posted by GMAN99 6 months ago
Not sure what you mean Rocklett, how long as BT going to get away with making money? Erm probably as long as possible isn't that the idea of business?

Posted by paulbeattie87 6 months ago
The pricing on this is just ridiculous. In Romania FTTB (Fibre to The Block) for 100Mbit is about €8 per month or £7-8. Openreach and ISPs need to get a handle on the costs of next gen broadband services.

Posted by Somerset 6 months ago
See comments on other item re Romania.

Posted by New_Londoner 6 months ago
Also, FTTB is not the same as FTTP as with FTTB the whole block are sharing a single link, often via copper within the building. With FTTP each residence gets its own fibre link, so a very different proposition.

Posted by dustofnations 6 months ago
@themanstan, New_Londoner - Wrong. From the HyperOptic FAQ.

Q: What kind of fibre network do you use?
A: We install a Fibre-To-The-Building (FTTB) network. This means we run fibre optics all the way to the basement of your property, instead of a cabinet at the end of your street. Within the building we use Ethernet cabling or fibre depending on its characteristics, both offer the same throughput at this usage. In your premise you will be presented with a single Ethernet port.

Posted by dustofnations 6 months ago
@New_Londoner - Nothing about FTTB says you can't terminate the same number of fibres inbound as the number of flats you wish to serve with ethernet, although it'd be fairly unnecessary.

Posted by themanstan 6 months ago
Not worng...

Posted by themanstan 6 months ago
wrong, even...

Posted by themanstan 6 months ago
And, where exactly I am wrong?