Broadband:
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High Speed Fibre
FTTC or more commonly known as fibre to the cab, was introduced by BT in 2011 as their new Infinity broadband package.
Fibre Optic Broadband services provide up to eight times faster speeds than the UK’s average broadband. The way this works by transmitting data over a fibre network up to the point of the local cabinet or exchange. The data is then carried for the final part of the journey (tail) to the customer premises by traditional copper cabling, the same used for traditional ADSL.
FTTP (fibre to the premises) are now available on the market offering a variety of speed options up to 110Mbps downloads with trials of an up to 330Mbps product. In 2013 we can expect to see the launch of a new service called FTTP on demand. FTTP on demand provides a similar service to the standard FTTP offering but will be available from FTTC enabled areas , running further fibre cable from the FTTC enabled exchange to the premisis and therefore increasing the availability of the FTTP product.
When is it available?
FTTC has been introduced into a number of local exchanges however the product has been mainly aimed at residential areas and will not be fully accessible for some time. You can check online by entering your postcode to find out of fibre has been installed in your local exchange but this does not necessarily mean that you can receive the service to your premises. It has 40% UK coverage (over 10 million premises) with a standard lead time for installation of 10 working days.
What kind of speeds can it deliver?
FTTC can deliver speeds up to 40MB download with up to 2Mbps or 10Mbps upload or up to 80 Mbps download with up to 20Mbps upload. FTTP can deliver various speed options up to 110Mbps download and up to 30Mbps upload.
