The majority of fibre broadband services sold in the UK are actually a Fibre-To-The-Cabinet service, or FTTC for short. With FTTC, a fibre optic connection is used from the telephone exchange to your local green street Cabinet. Albeit the longest cabling section, that’s as far as the Fibre connection goes. A copper cabling connection is then used from the street cabinet to the home or business (sometimes referred to as the “last mile” connection) With FTTC, it’s possible to obtain download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps. The actual speeds depend on the distance between your home or business and the green cabinet. Expect an average download speeds in the region of 60Mbps.

Around 91% of UK homes are able to get a fibre-to-the-cabinet service.