Tabatha Curry | Head of Growth
There's lots of general noise about just how good full-fibre broadband is, but we realised it would probably help to dive into the detail and give our top 5 reasons to switch, so you can see for yourself.
Everyone knows it’s no fun when your internet stops working. But when the connection along your old copper broadband cable breaks, this is exactly what happens.
And because copper cables are vulnerable to corrosion, more susceptible to bad weather and generally require regular maintenance, it can make those internet outages annoyingly frequent.
But a fibre-optic connection into your home is way more durable - it can even last up to 40 years with minimal maintenance.
So in theory, you're looking at a few decades of uninterrupted internet connection. Bliss.
Two-thirds of Brits (65%) have a streaming subscription service like Netflix or Amazon Prime, which makes up around 18.8 million households. So plenty of us will have experienced the dreaded buffering circle, or a screen that's so pixelated you can't actually make out who's saying what.
Full fibre speeds will make all that a thing of the past.
And because you'll want to keep using the internet on all your other devices at the same time as your TV, you can see why full-fibre broadband will help you finally join the dream stream.
WFH? Full fibre is your new best friend. It has much lower latency (the time delay that often leads to stilted video calls) and jitter (the variability in this delay). Which means team calls are a breeze – just as good as the real thing. It can't, however, teach people how to use the mute button.
Read our WFH Broadband guide to stay connected.
Whether it’s a laptop, mobile, smart watch, PS5 or smart speaker, chances are you have a surprising number of devices connected to the internet - particularly if you live with other people. And the truth is, we're only going to get more and more of these devices in our homes.
And the problem here is bandwidth. All of these things compete for it, and regular fibre broadband simply can't provide enough of it to go around.
Full fibre provides far, far more bandwidth for all your devices to comfortably work at their very best, simultaneously, 24/7. Making your home a frustration-free zone.
Most of the time, we're more concerned with download speeds: how fast we can get information from the internet. But upload speeds - how fast data can move from your device to the internet - are still really important. Here are just a few examples:
🤳🏻 Video calls - Full fibre will guarantee that you'll be seen in glorious high definition, and not as a pixellated blur.
📸 Uploading photo albums and videos - if you want to put your latest exploits on your social media account, full fibre upload speeds can potentially save you hours of time.
📽 Live-streaming - if you want to live stream anything, like gaming on Twitch, then a great upload speed is pretty essential if you want anyone to watch.
Now all you need to do is use our postcode checker to see if your address is ready for full fibre speeds.
Full fibre broadband (also known as FTTP: Fibre to the Premises) is currently being installed across the whole of the UK. That’s great, but what does it mean? Discover what it actually is in the guide.
Just been told you can upgrade to full fibre? Hooray! Get ready for life-changingly fast broadband speeds. Here’s everything you need to know about what happens next: