What is full fibre broadband, and why people keep asking

Full fibre is now plastered across street signs, ISP adverts and council leaflets, but most people still cannot say what it actually is or whether it is worth switching to. There is a one-sentence answer almost no provider gives clearly. Full fibre (also known as FTTP, or fibre to the premises) is a broadband connection that runs fibre optic cable all the way from the exchange to your property, with no copper anywhere, so your data travels as pulses of light through thin strands of glass.

This guide is written for two audiences at once. UK households deciding whether to switch, and UK small business owners or hybrid workers weighing up connectivity for work. Both face the same technology, but the questions diverge once you get past the basics. We cover realistic speeds, UK coverage in 2026, install day, what happens to your landline, costs, when full fibre is not the right call, the business angle, and how to switch without the usual hassle.

Full fibre vs FTTC: the copper bit that still trips people up

Here is the part most providers leave fuzzy on purpose. If you pay for a "fibre" broadband line today and you have not had an engineer drill a new cable into your house, you almost certainly have FTTC (fibre to the cabinet). The fibre runs to a green street cabinet, then copper handles the last stretch into your home. That copper is the bottleneck.

FTTC tops out around 80 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, and it gets worse the further your house sits from the cabinet. Around 70 Mbps at 300 metres, 40 Mbps at 800 metres, under 20 Mbps beyond 1.5 kilometres. Most users never realise their line is degrading by distance until they check.

Full fibre removes copper entirely. Speed does not depend on how far you live from the cabinet. Upload usually matches download on most plans, instead of the 15 to 20 Mbps cap you get on FTTC. Latency drops from 30 to 60 ms on FTTC to under 5 ms on full fibre, which is the difference between calls that stutter and calls that do not.

The shift is happening fast. FTTP overtook FTTC in the UK for the first time in Q3 2025, with 11.56 million full fibre lines against 10.60 million FTTC lines. The copper era is ending.

Realistic full fibre speeds: what "up to 1 Gbps" actually means

Anyone who has lived with an "up to 67 Mbps" line that delivers 30 Mbps is right to be sceptical of "up to 1 Gbps". So here is the honest version.

Full fibre packages on the Openreach network range from 100 Mbps up to 1.6 Gbps. Virgin Media's nexfibre network advertises a 2 Gbps tier in some urban areas. In practice, a 900 Mbps plan delivers something like 700 to 850 Mbps over Wi-Fi to a modern device near the router, with the rest lost to peak-hour congestion, Wi-Fi interference, router age and the number of devices fighting for airtime. Expect to lose 10 to 30% off the contracted figure on a normal day.

The UK national average maximum download speed rose to 285 Mbps in 2025, up from 223 Mbps the year before. Average data usage on a full fibre connection is 738 GB per month versus 583 GB across all broadband types, which tells you people genuinely use more once they have the headroom.

Most households do not need gigabit. Match the plan to actual usage, not to the biggest deal on the page.

Can you actually get full fibre? UK coverage in 2026

Coverage has moved quickly. As of Ofcom's Spring 2026 update, 82% of UK premises (24.9 million homes) can now get full fibre. Add Virgin Media's cable network and 89% of homes can get gigabit-capable broadband from at least one provider. Openreach has been connecting roughly 19,624 new premises every day at its peak build rate.

The catch is the urban-rural gap. Urban FTTP coverage sits at 81.1% while rural coverage is still 60.6%. If you live somewhere remote, the rollout is real but uneven. The next section covers what to do if your address is in the 18% that still cannot get FTTP.

Checking takes under a minute. You can check coverage at your address using the Inspire availability checker, or any postcode tool from Openreach or a comparison site. The result tells you which technologies your address can get today, and often which ones are planned for the next 12 months.

What happens on full fibre install day

Install day is shorter and less disruptive than most people expect. Two to four hours is normal, sometimes under an hour if the property already has the right ducting in place. An adult over 18 needs to be at home for the appointment.

The sequence goes like this. The engineer calls ahead to confirm timing. On arrival, they walk through the proposed cable route and ask you to sign a permission form before any drilling. They then drill a 10 to 12 mm hole through an exterior wall, feed the fibre cable in, and mount an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) on an interior wall near the entry point. The ONT is about the size of a paperback. Your router connects to it via a short Ethernet cable, then the engineer runs speed tests and shows you the connection working before they leave.

Two things to know up front. Brief speed dips and the odd disconnection are normal for up to 10 days as the line auto-optimises, not a fault. If you rent, the engineer needs written landlord permission before any drilling, which is the most common reason a switch stalls. The next-but-one section has an alternative if landlord permission is a no-go.

The landline question and the 2027 PSTN switch-off

Switching to full fibre means the phone runs over the broadband, not a separate copper line. And the copper phone network (PSTN, the public switched telephone network) is being switched off in January 2027 whether you move to fibre or not.

The replacement is digital voice, sometimes called VoIP. Your phone plugs into the router (or pairs with it wirelessly) and calls travel over the internet. Separate line rental is gone. Your existing phone number can usually be ported across, though allow 10 to 15 days after install for porting to complete.

The honest concern is power cuts. If the router loses power, the phone stops working. Ofcom requires providers to offer a free battery backup unit to any customer who relies solely on their landline, giving at least one hour of 999 access during an outage. If mobile signal at your address is patchy, ask for this before you switch.

Care alarms, medical pendants and older burglar alarms are the other thing to check. Many were designed for analogue copper lines and may need an adapter or replacement to work over digital voice. Check with the device manufacturer first.

The deadline is 31 January 2027. After that date the copper PSTN network is gone, and any service still relying on it (traditional landlines, ADSL, FTTC) stops with it.

How much full fibre costs in 2026

Here is the quick win nobody mentions in the ads. Entry-level full fibre often costs the same as the FTTC line you already pay for, sometimes less.

Rough price bands today. Entry tier at 100 to 150 Mbps lands around £22 to £25 per month. Mid-tier at 300 to 500 Mbps sits between £25 and £40. Gigabit speeds (900 Mbps and up) range from £29 to £55 depending on provider. Treat those as ranges, not promises, because deals shift and reward card offers come and go.

April 2026 context matters. BT, Sky, EE, TalkTalk and Vodafone all raised prices by roughly £3 to £4 a month in their annual review. Community Fibre in London cut prices by 25% the following month, which gives you a sense of how variable this market is right now.

Most full fibre plans give you the same monthly price as the FTTC you already have, with better upload, lower latency, and fewer weather-related dips. Inspire's broadband plans sit at the value end of the market, with a Trustpilot 4.9 from 600+ reviews and no mid-contract bait-and-switch. You can see Inspire's broadband plans directly.

When full fibre is not the right choice

A reasonable share of UK households would be better off not buying full fibre right now, and any honest guide should say so.

About 18% of UK premises (roughly 5.5 million homes) still cannot get FTTP, mostly rural. For them, 4G or 5G home broadband is often the better call. It uses a SIM-based router, no engineer, no drilling, and delivers 50 to 300 Mbps in many areas. Starlink satellite broadband is a fallback for off-grid properties where even mobile signal is weak.

Light single-person households are the other group. If you live alone, work mostly on email, and stream the occasional film, a 30 to 50 Mbps line is enough. Pay for gigabit and you are buying speed you will never use. Match the plan to actual usage, not the deal that looks biggest.

Renters without landlord permission are stuck. The engineer needs to drill an exterior wall to install the ONT, and many landlords refuse or take weeks to respond. Plug-and-play 4G or 5G home broadband sidesteps the problem entirely.

For businesses, full fibre broadband does not carry the uptime guarantees of a leased line, which is the conversation the next section opens up.

Full fibre for small businesses, home offices and when a leased line is the better call

Small businesses often discover too late that consumer broadband carries no meaningful SLA (service level agreement). A fault on a home line can take days to fix, with no compensation for downtime. If your work depends on the connection, that gap matters.

When consumer full fibre is fine for business. Sole traders, two-person teams, or anyone whose work is mostly email, video calls and cloud apps can usually run on a consumer line at 300 to 500 Mbps and never notice. The cost gap to a business product does not pay off until reliability becomes business-critical. This is the right answer for most freelancers and side businesses run from a spare room.

When business broadband is worth the upgrade. Once the connection becomes a professional tool, the maths changes. Business broadband adds prioritised UK support, a faster fault response with an SLA, a dedicated account manager, and fixed pricing for the contract length (typically 24, 36 or 72 months). That matters for SME budgeting in a market where every consumer provider raised prices mid-contract this year. BT Business and Virgin Media Business are the established options; Inspire Telecom Business is the challenger, with no mid-contract increases.

When a leased line is the answer. Ecommerce sites, call centres, any business where downtime has a measurable revenue cost. A leased line is a dedicated symmetric connection (100 Mbps to 10 Gbps) with a hard uptime SLA, usually 99.9% or 99.95%, and a fault response measured in hours not days. It costs more, contracts run 36 months or longer, and the value is in the guarantee rather than the raw speed.

Hybrid workers are the in-between case. Bandwidth on home full fibre is rarely the problem. Contention is. A household streaming, gaming and running smart devices can knock the wind out of a Teams call even on a gigabit line. A home office broadband product prioritises business traffic on the same line, solving the call-drop problem without a leased line bill.

How to switch to full fibre without the usual hassle

Since September 2024 you only have to contact your new provider. The rest happens automatically through Ofcom's One Touch Switch process.

Here is how it works. Tell your new provider you want to switch and they send a request through the TOTSCo Hub, which automatically cancels your old service. The switch completes in around 10 to 14 working days. You do not pay notice-period charges beyond the switch date. Consumer protections kick in if anything goes wrong: £9.33 per day automatic compensation for delayed switches, £29.15 for missed engineer appointments, £5.83 per day for total loss of service.

The honest caveat. The first year of One Touch Switch had its teething problems with delays and failed cancellations, so do not assume every switch runs perfectly. Keep an eye on the dates.

If you have read this far and decided full fibre is the right call, residential switches start at Inspire's broadband page, and business switches at business broadband.

Full fibre FAQ: the questions households and businesses keep asking