Exascale will take £3 off your bill for using your own router
Exascale, the Telford-based operator that has built full fibre to a few thousand premises in parts of Shropshire and also sells broadband over other companies’ networks, has put a price on the router it would otherwise post you. From today, customers who use their own router instead take £3 a month off the bill. As reported by ISPreview, the same update widens the window for booking an installation, and the provider has published both changes in its own announcement.
The discount is worth understanding, because the number is normally invisible. Most providers fold the cost of the box into the monthly price whether you wanted one or not, so you never find out what you paid for it. Exascale says £3 a month, on any of its packages. Over a two-year contract that is £72 you would otherwise spend on hardware you already own.
There is a condition. Exascale says the discount needs a router that is VLAN and DHCP capable, and that it is subject to eligibility and compatibility checks. That means kit you can log into and configure yourself, not the box your last provider sent you. ISPreview puts it more bluntly: this suits people already comfortable in a router’s admin settings, and the idea is not new, because a number of providers already sell cheaper packages to customers using their own equipment. Our guide to using your own router covers what has to work before you try it.
On Exascale’s own figures the discount stacks with an offer already running. It says its 2.5Gbps package on the CityFibre network is £40 a month until the end of August, or £37 with your own router, and that the standard price afterwards is £45, or £42 with the discount. Those are the provider’s numbers rather than ones we have checked against a live order, so treat them as the start of a quote instead of the quote itself.
The second change is quieter and will suit more people. New orders can now pick an installation slot from seven days ahead out to 90 days in advance, so a move that is still two months off can be booked now rather than chased nearer the time. Our guide to what happens on installation day covers what the appointment itself involves.
One thing neither announcement settles is who sorts it out when your own router turns out to be the thing at fault. A provider that supplied the box owns that problem. A provider that did not may reasonably look at your kit first. Worth asking before you take the £3. Full fibre goes in street by street whoever is selling it, so the availability checker is the place to start on your own address.