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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