Edited Press Release
LONDON -(Dow Jones)- BT Group PLC's (BT) division Openreach Monday announced price reductions of up to 65% across a range of key access and backhaul products, opening the door for communications providers to invest in higher backhaul bandwidths in the crucial "middle mile".
Effective immediately for new and existing connection orders, and from the Feb. 1 2009 for rentals, the price reductions will encompass most of Openreach's WES, WEES and BES products.
Changes include:
BES 1Gb product connection reduced by up to 62% and rental by up to 31%.
WES/WEES 100Mb local access reduced to the same price as 10Mb Local Access for both connection and rental, representing a reduction of up to 43% for connection and up to 14% for rental.
BES 100Mb reduced to the same price as BES 10Mb for connection and rental, representing a reduction of up to 65% for connection and up to 26% for rental.
Openreach strongly believes that these price reductions will play a key part in enabling the communications industry to meet the demands for higher bandwidth from end users in the fixed and mobile broadband markets, as well as business connectivity.
The cost of network infrastructure in providing backhaul is frequently cited as a key barrier to enabling true high speed broadband in the UK, and enabling delivery of backhaul bandwidth-intensive services such as iPlayer and YouTube. These price changes are a key step in delivering network cost savings to communications providers who in turn can choose how they pass on the bandwidth benefits to their end users.
Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach said: "For our key broadband suppliers this means the opportunity to buy super-fast gigabit capacity at drastically reduced prices and the chance to enhance their own network capacity with minimal incremental investment. In addition Communication Providers will soon be able to purchase ten times the capacity they buy today for more or less the same price, allowing business customers to massively improve their connectivity at a fraction of the cost, and providing a boost for UK competitiveness in an uncertain economic climate." "Openreach firmly believes in the benefits of a competitive market for ethernet services, and we feel confident that these price reductions represent great news for communications providers."
These significant price changes across Openreach's ethernet portfolio will not only deliver real cost savings to existing users, but will open up the portfolio to customers who may not have considered ethernet as an affordable technology in the past.
Company website: www.bt.com
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/al?rnd=XArlKZdU3IpnWbzCSPbKCA%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 24, 2008 05:13 ET (10:13 GMT)

Publié le 24 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones