Fibre Broadband Deals

The first is FTTC, fibre to the cabinet. Fibre reaches the green box on your street, then tired copper carries the last stretch to your house. Sold as plain "fibre" or "superfast", it advertises averages around 35 to 67Mbps, tops out near 80Mbps and fades the further you live from the cabinet. A few hundred metres of copper can quietly halve the headline figure without anyone breaching an advertising rule.

The second is FTTP, fibre to the premises, usually badged "full fibre". Glass runs the whole way in, no copper anywhere. It starts around 100Mbps, runs past a gigabit and does not care how far you live from the cabinet, because there is no cabinet in the chain. If that is the product you want, it pays to compare full fibre deals on their own terms, from which speed tier is worth paying for to which networks match upload to download. This page has a simpler job: making sure you know which of the two you are putting a contract on.

The advertised speed is the tell. An average of 35 to 67Mbps means part-copper FTTC, whatever the tile calls it. 100Mbps or more means full fibre, or Virgin Media's cable, a separate network that is quick downstream and much slower up. The words "full fibre" or "FTTP" in a deal name mean glass all the way. Plain "fibre" on its own promises nothing of the sort.

The differences between connection types all come down to one question: how far the glass gets before copper takes over.

The right tier is mostly about who lives in your house:

• One or two people who stream and browse: 50 to 100Mbps is plenty, and the one case where FTTC still holds its own.
• A family running 4K telly, video calls and a console at once: 100 to 300Mbps, which in practice means full fibre or cable.
• Someone working from home, plus a teenager who lost the ability to function below 50Mbps: 300Mbps or more, and watch the upload figure, because calls and backups push data the other way.
• The very top end: gigabit deals and their multi-gigabit cousins are a separate conversation, and one most households never need to have.

The trap is paying for the biggest number on the shelf. Working out what speed you actually need usually points at a cheaper tier than the adverts suggest.

If you are on FTTC now, two clocks are ticking. The first is financial. Out-of-contract FTTC prices drift up while entry full fibre gets cheaper, so plenty of households pay more for 67Mbps part-copper than their neighbours pay for twice the speed. If your contract ended a while ago, check whether you are overpaying before another billing month goes by.

The second clock is the network itself. The old copper phone system is being retired from 31 January 2027, and FTTC depends on that copper for its final stretch. Openreach's full fibre build has already put a gigabit-capable connection within reach of around 9 in 10 UK premises. FTTC has a retirement date, and signing a long contract on it when full fibre has reached your street is taking a long lease on a building scheduled for demolition.

Whichever way you go, judge a deal on the price after its scheduled rise, not the introductory figure. Under Ofcom's rules for contracts signed since January 2025, any increase must be spelled out in pounds and pence before you sign.

The default order is best value, which we treat as speed-per-pound, marked down for prices that leap mid-contract and for bundles padded out with extras you never asked for. Full fibre tends to rise above FTTC at similar prices, because it delivers more of what you pay for. Paid placements and exclusives are always badged, so you can tell a paid spot from an earned one.