Broadband – FTTP

Currently (with a few lucky exceptions on Station Road), Internet connectivity in the village is provided by FTTC providing a maximum speed of approx. 70-80Mbps downstream (but likely to be a lot slower for most of us). This is because only part of the connection is fibre. FTTC stands for Fibre to the Cabinet (the cabinets are the green boxes in/around the village). From that point onto your house your broadband connection is using copper or aluminium cable. The maximum broadband speed you get depends on the distance from your cabinet to your house. The shorter the distance, the faster your broadband.

FTTP stands for Fibre to the Premises so you have 100% fibre all the way to your property, so distance doesn’t matter. This means speeds of up to 1000Mbps (i.e. 1Gbps) are available.

This diagram shows the differences.

There are many benefits to FTTP:

  • Choice: You are still able to choose your Internet provider. You do not order service from Openreach (your chosen provider uses the Openreach network to provide your service to you)
  • Speed: Far greater speeds are available via FTTP. In addition to better download speeds, upload speeds are better too (this is useful for things like 2-way video, e.g. Zoom calls).
  • Speed Guarantees: You are likely to get a better minimum speed guarantee from your provider. For example, at the time of writing, BT guarantee 100Mbps download on their Fibre 100 service, see here for latest information).
  • Cost: It it likely that a FTTP service will be of similar cost compared to an inferior FTTC service. (Note: It’s quite difficult to currently see what your costs would be when your address is currently unable to order the service, since most providers only show currently available services).

These links provide some information relating the BT services available over FTTP (just as examples, other providers are available).