FTTC vs FTTP: What's the Difference?
Demystifying the acronyms: Why Fibre to the Premises is the superior choice.
The Great “Fibre” Marketing Trick
If you have bought broadband in the last 15 years, you have almost certainly been sold a “Fibre” package. You might be paying for “Superfast Fibre” right now. But here is the uncomfortable truth: for most of the UK, that “Fibre” connection is actually mostly made of copper.
Advertising rules historically allowed ISPs to use the word “fibre” to describe a hybrid technology called FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet). To understand why your internet might still feel slow or unreliable, you need to understand the physics of the two competing technologies: FTTC and FTTP.
FTTC: Fibre to the Cabinet
In an FTTC setup, a fast fibre optic cable runs from the telephone exchange to the green metal cabinet on your street corner. That part is indeed fast. However, the final leg of the journey—from that green cabinet to your house—uses the existing copper telephone wires that were laid decades ago for voice calls.
The Copper Problem: Copper uses electrical signals to transmit data. Electricity faces resistance. As the signal travels down the thin copper wire, it gets weaker and weaker (attenuation). This is why your distance from the cabinet matters so much. If you live next door to the cabinet, you might get 80Mbps. If you live 800 meters away, you might be lucky to get 20Mbps. The “fibre” speed is strangled by the copper length. You can learn more about how this affects your connection in our speed test guide.
Furthermore, copper acts like an antenna. It picks up interference from bad weather, electrical equipment, and even your neighbour’s faulty microwave. This causes “packet loss” and connection drops.
FTTP: Fibre to the Premises
FTTP (Fibre to the Premises), also known as “Full Fibre,” eliminates the copper entirely. A strand of glass, no thicker than a human hair, runs all the way from the exchange, down the street, and directly through your wall into a modem inside your home. This is the technology used by CityFibre to deliver reliable, high-speed internet.
The Light Advantage: Fibre optics use pulses of light to transmit data. Light traveling through high-quality glass faces almost zero resistance. It does not degrade over distance in the same way electrical signals do. Whether you are 10 meters or 10 kilometers from the exchange, you get the same speed.
Because light is immune to electromagnetic interference, your connection becomes rock solid. It doesn’t slow down when it rains. It doesn’t jitter when the streetlights turn on. It just works. This reliability is the true upgrade of FTTP. The raw speed (1000Mbps+) is amazing, but the consistency is what changes your daily experience.
Beyond just raw download speed, FTTP allows for symmetrical upload speeds and much lower latency, which is crucial for gamers and remote workers. If you’re upgrading, you’ll also want to ensure your hardware is up to the task; check our guide on the best routers for gigabit fibre.