TalkTalk on Tuesday announced that it will not charge a premium for its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband service when it launches in York later this year.

The telco will offer homes and businesses access to gigabit broadband for the same price as standard broadband, with prices starting from just under £22 per month.

The move was expected. Speaking at Connected Britain last week, Richard Sinclair, TalkTalk's ultrafast general manager, said that while many people perceive fibre broadband to be an expensive service, TalkTalk's offer is all about democratising ultrafast broadband and enabling "all Britain to have access to this technology."

"Price really matters," he said.

TalkTalk will sell ultrafast broadband under the Ultra Fibre Optic (UFO) brand and it will come as standard with its three consumer packages and its Complete Business Broadband package for the SME market.

Customers will pay an all-in rate, rather than having separate broadband and line rental prices, with the most basic Simply Broadband plan starting at £21.70 per month. Complete Business Broadband is priced at £25 a month.

"Ultra Fibre Optic will revolutionise the broadband experience in York by giving consumers and businesses access to all the speed and bandwidth they could ever need, at an affordable price, future-proofing the city and making York better off," said TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding, in a statement.

Harding also took the opportunity to have a dig at incumbent operator BT, albeit without naming names.

"The U.K. has lived with broadband infrastructure that has suffered significant underinvestment for too long and we lag well behind the rest of Europe when it comes to rolling out pure, ultrafast, fibre networks," she said. "We have the potential to become the world's leading digital economy, but we need this kind of investment in superior fibre infrastructure to make this a reality."

TalkTalk is working with metro fibre network operator CityFibre and rival retail player Sky on the York project. The joint venture is one of a handful of companies rolling out infrastructure in the U.K. to rival that of BT, although all have selected limited geographies for deployment, prompting accusations of cherry picking.

Nonetheless, the new networks will provide ultrafast broadband to end users that otherwise might not have had access.

The first customers in York are due to be connected in the autumn. TalkTalk is giving priority to its existing consumer and business users.