Watch our video about different connection types. According to the national Infrastructure Commission, Full Fibre has five times fewer faults than copper connections. Read the Cebr research report. About Community Fibre Partnerships. View all News and Opinion. Where and when we're building. Modern slavery statement. About Engineer Appointments. Make a Complaint. Cookies and Privacy. We use cookies to bring you a great browsing experience - and to find ways to make it even better.
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Skip to content. The most widely-available is known as fibre-to-the-cabinet FTTC , which uses fibre-optic cables from your provider's broadband exchange to the green cabinets you see on your street. The rest of the connection then relies on the same copper wires as ADSL, making it faster than a purely copper connection, but still slower than 'full fibre', or fibre-to-the-premises FTTP broadband.
It provides superfast broadband speeds between Mbps. Take a look at our fibre broadband deals. Full fibre broadband, also known as fibre-to-the-premises FTTP broadband , uses fibre-optic cables for the entire connection from the provider directly into your home. However, there has been significant government and private investment in rapidly increasing access to full fibre broadband in the coming years, especially with projects like Project Gigabit.
So in order to bring the UK in line with other countries throughout Europe, network providers are adding thousands of homes to their network every month. As a result, full fibre broadband might be more available than you think. It's a common myth that fibre is expensive and hard to get. This makes fibre an excellent choice for larger families, households that have a lot of connected devices, online gamers, people who work from home or regular streamers of TV shows, music and films. Have a look at our fibre broadband deals to find out which providers offer fibre-optic broadband in your area.
The majority of homes rely on the Openreach network, as it is the only supplier of copper-based ADSL and fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband — both of which take up the vast majority of connections in the country.
It also has a growing full fibre or fibre-to-the-premises network where certain customers can access ultrafast BT deals, but there is a lot more competition amongst other providers for this type of connection than there is for the slower, more widely-available types.
Virgin Media's cable broadband is different from fibre in a few key ways. While it also uses fibre-optic cables from its exchange to each local street cabinet, it then uses its own 'coaxial' cables to finish the journey to your home.
This means Virgin Media is also capable of delivering very fast broadband speeds — currently ranging from Mbps to Mbps across the UK, and up to 1Gbps speeds in a growing number of locations.
In fact, it aims to be capable of providing 1Gbps to every connected property by the end of Skip to main content Home View broadband availability View mobile availability About the mobile and broadband checker View broadband availability Use of this checker is subject to Ofcom's terms of use Please enter your postcode to see the broadband services that are present at your location, or click the button to enable the site to find your location.
Get postcode automatically. Find out what these results mean. What the results mean The download and upload speeds shown are the highest predicted speeds that could be received at the selected location, subject to service availability.
This technology is also called fibre-to-the-premises, or FTTP broadband. As the name suggests, this involves fibre-optic cables running all the way from the broadband exchange to your home, which can offer speeds in excess of Mbps 1Gbps. The government recently announced Project Gigabit to speed this process up though. Adding this to providers' efforts to grow their own FTTP networks means that full fibre will likely be available to you in the next couple of years.
Simply put, checking your postcode to see exactly what's available in your area is the best way to find out how you can get the right broadband for your needs. Our own research at Uswitch discovered that nearly one fifth of homes achieve speeds of less than 10Mbps, while one in ten can be as slow as 5Mbps. Ofcom has pointed out this is very unlikely to be enough to cover the average family's demand for internet, especially when accounting for music and TV streaming.
Thankfully, there has been a big push in the last couple of years to provide gigabit broadband speeds for as many UK homes as possible this decade. This is an ambitious target, but it should hopefully mean that soon those suffering on slow connections will get faster, more reliable speeds in the coming years.
If your property can't access gigabit broadband yet, it's still worth checking Uswitch to see if you could benefit from switching providers. Especially if you're in a rural area, and you feel you aren't getting the speeds you need. Take a look at our broadband availability checker guide to learn more about the different broadband types in your area.
Our broadband postcode checker will quickly show you if your location can access fibre broadband, and at what speeds. You can then filter the deals that come up to only show fibre broadband packages. We'd recommend making use of our fibre-optic broadband checker to ensure you're pricing up exactly what you need and can access it in your area.
At Uswitch, we can show you deals from some of the best broadband providers , including:.
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