topic Re: Fibre cabling in Broadband

Fibre cabling

shankalamb — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 14:46:39 GMT

We have just had our block of Flats wired throughout for Fibre, when will this upgrade occur, I am supposed to be on Fibre with Plusnet, little bit confused !!

Re: Fibre cabling

bmc — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 15:22:28 GMT

@shankalamb

First question is - did OpenReach do the work or was it one of the Alternative suppliers?

You'll probably be on FTTC which uses the copper phone line from your cabinet to your flat. With FTTP it uses fibre optic cable all the way. Unfortunately both get referred to as Fibre.

If it's OpenReach who did the work PlusNet don't currently offer a service but it's rumoured to be coming in the "very near future".

Brian

Re: Fibre cabling

mrmitch85 — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 08:37:17 GMT

There are two types of fibre broadband:

Fibre to the cabinet (or FTTC). The fibre optic cable goes to the cabinet (i.e the green BT/Openreach box thing out in the street). From here, a normal copper telephone line goes into your house/flat and gives you your internet, giving you speeds of up to 80 meg. This will be what you have now.

Fibre to the premises (or FTTP) (Mod note:Typo corrected). The fibre optic cable comes straight into your home, cutting out the traditional copper phone line altogether. This gives you speeds far in excess of 80 meg!

Unfortunately, Plusnet don't currently offer FTTP. It's expected they'll launch this some time this year. But at the moment if you want to take advantage of your newly installed FTTP (sometimes called 'full fibre) cabling, you'll need to switch to BT or another supplier that offer this.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little jealous as my flats aren't wired for fibre (despite all of the individual houses in the street having it) as it's quite complicated to install into flats and building management companies aren't always interested / willing to work with Openreach... So you're lucky to have it!