Openserve recently told ISPs that it was upgrading its wholesale fibre line speeds at no additional charge while also cutting fibre line rental costs.
This means that many Openserve customers may see their line speeds doubled due to the network’s migration of their customer base to higher connection speeds.
However, the price cuts across Openserve’s wholesale product portfolio do not tell the whole story, according to Vox head of fibre and data Mary Ogilvy.
“Vox has received notification from Openserve regarding a product change on OFC, OCC, and OPC,” Ogilvy said.
“As previously shared with MyBroadband, the Openserve product is broken into two components. i.e. Line Rental and IPC.”
Openserve has made significant changes to its wholesale broadband offering over the past year, although it still comprises a fixed-line rental fee in addition to a wholesale charge for bandwidth (historically referred to as IP Connect, or IPC).
Ogilvy said that following the line speed upgrade implemented by Openserve, ISPs may end up paying even more to Openserve due to the increased bandwidth usage by customers.
She added that the line rental price cuts should not be taken by customers to reflect a drop in the price of their connections, as it only reflects the fixed wholesale cost of the Openserve offering.
“The costing is very misleading for an end-user as its only half the service,” Ogilvy said.
“The Openserve change will cost ISPs more money rather than less (our IPC consumption will go up) and I will be surprised if ISP’s drop their pricing.”
“The main benefit to the customer will be that their line speed will be doubled as Openserve is doing a mass migration on their base,” she added.
ISPs reviewing changes
MyBroadband contacted various local ISPs to determine what effect these changes would have on their customers.
It is likely that most ISPs will enable the double line speed upgrades as this is a function of Openserve’s network migration.
However, many ISPs said they would need to carefully inspect the changes to determine whether they could enable retail price changes for their customers.
RSAWEB’s Daryn Edison said the ISP had received the line speed changes and confirmed that customers would receive the additional bandwidth.
“We can confirm that we have received Openserve’s new line speed structure,” he said.
“We are currently reviewing our current Openserve packages, and will be passing on the additional bandwidth to our customers in due course.”
“As always, we will strive to provide our customers with the best value for money and customer experience that RSAWEB is known for,” he said.
MWEB told MyBroadband that it was still evaluating the changes communicated by Openserve.
“We’ll communicate with our customers on the way forward as soon as possible,” the ISP said.
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Sourced from: My Broadband. View the original article here.
