WBMC Shared ISPs do not pay separately for the exchange backhaul nor MSILs. BTw does all the management and buying the MSILs. - They take WBC pricing then bundle it as a package to resell to the ISP.
IPSC is a consolidation product so that 20CN can join the 21CN network at the core nodes (MSILs) rather than having separate centrals.
Whilst the IPSC price list shows pricing for WBC, not all of them are applicable to shared WMBC, and primarily aimed at ISPs who use WBC.
With Shared WMBC, pricing consists of 3 main elements
- DSLAM port costs (Access)
- Rental cost of the Host Link (CP 1Gb/10Gb Connectivity)
- Bandwidth from the Core through the Host Link (Contracted Bandwidth)
This pricing structure is similar to the old centrals, but the difference being is the Host link can be comprised of both 20CN (IPSC) and 21CN traffic. However bandwidth for the 2 elements are separate and as such the ISP is billed separately for IPSC bandwidth and 21CN bandwidth, adjusting the size of the segmentations as they see fit.
What they describe as 'Handover' is specific to WBC IPSC and the equivalent to an AP for WBC 21CN. In the case of shared WMBC these will be bought and managed by BTw. BTw also buys and manages the interconnect MSILs which can consist of both 21CN and IPSC traffic... and finally uses the MPLS core for traffic onwards to the ISP's PoP.
The "Host links" are basically either EAD (Ethernet Access) or WES (Wholesale Extension) depending on location and or the size of the pipe.... then obviously they have to pay for the bandwidth on top of that. I think with WES there's an additional charge based on the distance from the BT node.
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I'd also not noticed the separate £1.085 charge before. It will be added on as the other price in the list is £4.51. {£4.51. + 1.085 = £5.59} which is what I quoted in my above post which was taken from the WBC price list
This could be something to do with OFCOM breaking down the charges so that certain elements didnt rise above 'x' amount per year. From memory there was some mention that it was anticipated bandwidth requirements (connectivity to the DSLAM?) would rise and therefore costs in this area could rise more. Id have to find the OFCOM doc and read it though, which I dont particularly want to nor have time or patience. If you want to look in that area though Id start with OFCOM and them breaking down the access costs for the relevant markets and how much BT could raise charges in those 2 areas each year.
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Re pricing
WBMC (WBC) Total Best Efforts Contracted Bandwidth: £48.55 per Mbit/s per month
WBMC (IPsC) Best Efforts Contracted Bandwidth charge (Market A): £63.56 per Mbit/s per month
On reflection, Im not surprised it is a bit dearer. We all know that the 21CN backhauls are larger and more efficient. The old MiSP backhauls were never designed to cope with such high volumes of traffic. 21CN also uses QoS and its a known fact that 21CN is mostly what helped bring down the price of bandwidth from the days when it really did cost the ISPs £1 per GB on MiSP.
TBH I'd forgotten that the IPSC contracted bandwidth for WBMC shared was so much dearer [memory->seive for info over the past year] ... especially since the contracted bandwidth price list for shared WBMC isnt readily available on the internet. For that reason I can now see why some ISP's are having to charge more. Other prices like port costs may be cheaper... but it will be bandwidth that is keeping the price high.
That said, it does seem rather unfair that it appears to be only WBMC shared that are targetted with the higher IPSC pricing.
Any ISP that purchases their own MSILs gets it at a far cheaper price (£40 per Mbit/s per month) plus the discounted handover link, which is exactly the same price as normal WBC 21CN backhaul transit.
The other difference is an IPSC handover link is £6,532.00.... compared to £1528 for a WBC regional AP or £6532 for a WBC national AP.
The RevK problem is that it becomes difficult to divide that £63.56 per month for 1 Mbit between an ever decreasing number of customers, plus people don't expect to pay £40+ or £60+ per month multiplied by their line speed in Mb.
Yup. It may not affect him yet, but it will do at some point. With him being shared WBMC, he
may be able to do some careful jigging around so that all 'national' IPSC links come through to just one host link. I'm not certain on that though, but at very least he should be able to make use of session steering to direct 20cn accounts to a specific gateway thus reducing the no of host links with IPSC traffic.
In the case of Plusnet, they are winding down the host links and moving to 'regional' dedicated, but it will be in plusnets interests in due time to retain IPSC as national and have all 20cn users coming through one link regardless of where in the UK they are. I think even Dedicated can designate a national MSIL as they supposedly can mix and match what they like.. but since they already have hostlinks with national IPSC they may retain them where they already are, giving those best part of a £mill Junipers something to do. With purchasing their own MSILs, they could even take a separate national IPSC Handover from where ever they want and hook it into one of their MSILs.
Plusnet will also have an additional & separate BT for cost for Core Transit. I dont know how much that will be and cant recall ever seeing a price list for it. But Core transit is relatively cheap and no where near the costs involved in backhaul transit.
WBC and Dedicated WBMC products are actually very similar. The difference is that WBC uses a third party for Core Transit, whilst Dedicated uses the BT Core network.
For this element there should be no pricing differential between 20cn and 21cn, as 20cn will have already been handed over at the MSIL and before CORE. This point though is irreverent at present as they are still using Shared WBMC for IPSC.
The real nonsense is that Plusnet continue to charge more for WBC ADSL and WBC FTTC end users outside of their "low cost area", because they figure those customers must be used to it by now.
Agreed. Even more so in the case of FTTC which has to go over 21CN and will be via a headend exchange rather than the local exchange. They will not be incurring the higher bandwidth charges, nor being charged any more by BTw/Openreach.