Ultra-fast full fibre Internet

In 2018, the UK Government announced a pledge to provide full fibre broadband to 15 million households by 2025 and complete coverage by 2033. Subsequently the coverage ambitions have been revised to as “soon as possible”, so when that is anyone’s guess. However, small business is leading the way and in 2020 I have been fortunate to have had full fibre installed to my home by a small company founded at the end of 2018.

Here is a quick summary of the physical network types that underlay an Internet service. In the order of fastest to slowest they are:

• Fibre to the Premise (FTTC)

• Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) & Copper to the Premise

• Copper to the Premise

The most impressive aspects of FTTP are the speeds available today and the relative ease with which the service can be upgraded. For example, today my provider offers a symmetrical service of up to 2gbit (2000mbit). The Network Terminating Unit (NTU) that provides a hand off to my router is capable of supporting 10gbit and could do so with a soft upgrade by the service provider. In other words, this can be done with a few changes to code. To put this into perspective, to provide such capabilities in a commercial environment just a few years ago could run into the tens of thousands for equipment installation, the digging of fibre and further recurring costs in the thousands for the service itself.

In comparison, for copper and coaxial based FTTC solutions, some needed innovation has been made to squeeze a bit more juice out of the coaxial infrastructure to come close to asymmetrical bandwidth offerings of 1gbit. Nevertheless, Fibre will always have the edge on loss-less symmetrical services and a 100gbit test in 2018 provides tangible proof of the coming upside potential.

Innovation timeline

I felt it pertinent and interesting to map out the physical delivery methods to my home for the last 18 years. Adjusted for inflation, the monthly costs of these services have ranged between £40 - £60 ($52 - $78 USD).

Year	Technology	Real-world speeds I achieved	Physical delivery
2020 - present	FTTP	400mbit (2000mbit capable*)	FTTP
2013 - 2020	VDSL	Up to 60mbit	FTTC & Copper
2007 - 2013	ADSL2+ & annex M	10 - 20mbit	Copper
2002-2007	ADSL	0.5 - 8mbit	Copper

*Symmetric 2000mbit service is available for £109/month (Approximately $140 USD). This exceeds my current requirements, although in the long run as technology demands grow I’ll likely upgrade.

2020 is the true moment of exponential growth as we can see in this graph:

The digital revolution has just begun!