| Posted: Tuesday 14th August 2007 by
Sam |
BT Wholesale's Consult21 team have published indicative trial pricing for the Real Time QoS option for the new Wholesale Broadband Connect product. As with the pricing for Assured Sessions (the other QoS option), there is a massive difference between pricing between "Band 1 exchanges" and "Band 2 exchanges" (of which there are ~1016 and ~4500 respectively).
| QoS Product | End User Charge (per month) | AP Bandwidth Charges |
|---|
| Real Time | Band 1: £2.20 for 220kbps
Band 1: £3.20 for 350kbps
Band 1: £6.20 for 700kbps
Band 2: £6.00 for 220kbps
Band 2: £9.00 for 350kbps
Band 2: £18.00 for 700kbps | £70.00/month per Mbit
(in addition to the £67.90 p.m for each contracted Mbit) |
The Consult21 documentation says that this pricing difference reflects the additional cost of delivering bandwidth to more remote areas. A similar scheme already exists on the present-day IPStream product, although the difference is only £1.24 of the monthly connection. But with these new cost differences being much larger than that, it is hard to see how ISPs will not be forced to implement regional pricing (at least for QoS sessions).
On a related note, trial MSIL pricing has also been released. For the duration of the trial only the 1Gbps MSIL product will be available. See the 21CN and Broadband page for the full pricing breakdown of both MSIL products and the QoS options.
Update: Keith over at TeleBusillis has put up an excellent article analysing the effect that these new prices might have on the broadband market. |