Full Fibre Broadband – what is it?

11 December 2020

There are a couple of acronyms that confuse people when it comes to fibre broadband. The majority of people have access to fibre broadband, this is true, but most broadband connections are FTTC.

FTTC is the acronym for Fibre-To-The-Cabinet. This is where fibre optic cable travels from the exchange as far as the green cabinet in your street, and then copper wires connect your home or business. The distance you are from the nearest exchange can impact greatly on the speeds you're able to receive. We can now deliver full fibre connections using FTTP, Fibre-To-The-Premises, or FTTH, Fibre-To-The-Home.

Full fibre uses fibre optic cables from the exchange directly to your home, making the connection 20 times faster! Full fibre broadband allows data to be transferred at a much faster rate than traditional copper cable (enabling speeds of up to 1000 Mbps). Web conferencing, streaming, file sharing and cloud management can all run seamlessly with a full fibre connection. Fibre optic cables can also sustain any change in temperature. If you already have full fibre then there's no need to worry about your internet connection dropping due to the change in weather.

If you are working from home, full fibre broadband has never been more important. In July, CityFibre asked people if their internet connection impacted their ability to work from home successfully – a staggering 77% of people said yes! According to Ofcom, at the height of lockdown, people spent 40% of their days watching TV and online video services. That's 6 hours and 25 minutes a day, on average, or 45 hours a week.

Fibre optic is the future of broadband – fact! The UK Government have pledged to work towards delivering full fibre broadband to 85% of homes by 2025. To achieve this they are investing £5 billion to ensure the hardest-to-reach are also connected. Laying the infrastructure required will be challenging, however, a smarter city will drive benefits for everyone. There are now 22 local authorities with FTTP coverage above 50% and York is at just over 60%.

Find out if you can get a full fibre connection by emailing [email protected].