Is full fibre (also known as ‘fibre-to-the-premises’ (FTTP) available in your area?
Living in rural worcestershire (WR8) we have fibre to the home (for more than 6years).
At 900 Mbs down and 150 Mbs up.
Those are very decent speeds @Juliandc - one of the BBG community team in rural Devon is still limping by on copper cable, maxing out at 8gb on a good day!
Worcestershire County Council had a campaign maybe 10 years ago. There was a website where you registered interest. I got 100% in my local community that drove OpenReach interest.
So I’d definitely recommend communities still on copper to register with OpenReach
How can you tell whether there is full fibre where you live?
I use https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/ultrafast-full-fibre-broadband which I think is probably accurate, I am not sure if it will show up availability from other, smaller providers though?
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Hi Greenwellys. How long have you lived where you are? Has an OpenReach green box appeared at the end of your road with a mention of fibre? Have you seen OpenReach or HyperOptic or somesuch vans stringing thicker “cables” across telephone poles? Or have neighbours mentioned their improved broadband if they’ve been visited by Sky or BT or EE or other network vans?
All these could be clues as to whether fibre to the cabinet (the green box) or fibre all the way to your home is available in your area. Best wishes with your investigation. You could also look at sites like CompareTheMarket or MoneySuperMarket comparison sites. Select broadband. Enter your address and see what speeds come up. You don’t need to accept any offers. Just window shopping.
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Yep, it’s available in my area (Swansea) but not in the development where I live, so we have copper cable from the exchange box to the houses. However, the Openreach site says they are working on installing it, and it will be available by the end of 2026! Let’s hope so, as we’re currently getting top speeds of only 36 Mbs down and 8 Mbs up.
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Canterbury area here yes full fibre for most of the city area not so much on the outskirts of the area.
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Another site worth looking at - Better Internet Dashboard - shows all the available fibre suppliers by postcode. Not just Openreach that is but also any alternative networks (altnets). There is also an option to show future roadworks related to installations. It has proved very reliable in my own area at least (WR14).
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Yes - it is supplied by Virgin Media
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I live in the northeast of Scotland and fibre has been available here for 3 years. Speeds are 900/115 with my isp Zen. However EE do offer 1.6gb down 110mb up. Zen are, in my opinion, the best isp around. A little pricier than most but fixed prices with no increases during contracted time.
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So helpful to hear what experiences are on the ground (or at the desk, on the TV!) rather than the headline promises. Thanks for sharing your experiences too @Nismo @JBR @tigercub58 @G3000 @Hugh
So far we’ve had Worcestershire, Devon, Swansea, Canterbury, North-East Scotland.
Anyone from the the north or east of England able to give a perspective?
Or what about you Londoners, or Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool - does being in the big city mean big speeds too? (not that you get big speeds, but you know…).
Or somewhere else we’ve missed?
I live in Torpoint which is a small town just on the Cornwall side of the River Tamar. Cornwall has its own broadband provider called Wildanet. A couple of years ago it dug up vast swathes of the town and installed full fibre in most of the streets. There are some missing areas including the small group of cul de sacs in which I live. Everywhere is tarmac but when they put in our estate they installed paver blocks on some of the roads instead, including ours. The company does not seem to be able to cope with this surface and so we are left without the full fibre option. I can look out of my bedroom window and see where the trench finishes, which annoys me every time I see it. We have chased them constantly but never get a reply. The final straw was when a sales person came around trying to get us to sign up!
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Welcome @stargazer - that definitely doesn’t seem like an unusual situation, one of our team is in Devon and a similar story with another local provider being able to send a salesperson door to door but neglecting that there needs to be a service in place ready to sell! Does your area have a 4/5g option available to you (we know the answer is often no, but worth considering as costs and speeds can rival other options).
Hi Max_BBG
Yes we do have a 4/5g option but I wouldn’t want to rely on it as there are too many drop-outs. I am not a gamer or watch films online so the actual speed we get is usually ok for most needs but I would have liked to have the option especially as all this was flagged up with much fanfare at the beginning.
I live c.12km east of Stafford. FF has finally arrived in our rural area. However, OR want to charge my selected provider (Sky) £1,100 to install FF as they will need to put up an extra pole to get the line to my house. The really annoying thing is that the Main post on which the FF cables are hanging IS ON MY LAND and I have never been paid anything for allowing it there!!! My next door neighbour say that OR expect his provider (PlusNet) to pay c. £4,000 as they will have to dig up the road to get it to him! I thought the government was supposed to be paying for all these costs? Needless to say, neither ISP is willing to foot the bill so we are without FF when it’s right outside our properties!!
That’s frustrating and also very interesting. I would have thought that Sky or OpenReach would have to pay to install poles or equipment on private land. So that’s not the case?