FTTP vs FTTC: full fibre vs part fibre broadband

FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) runs fibre to the green street cabinet and copper wire from there to your home, so it tops out at about 76–80 Mbps download. FTTP (fibre to the premises, or "full fibre") runs fibre all the way into your home, with Openreach selling speeds up to 1,600 Mbps. If your line is FTTC and you need more than about 70 Mbps, or a faster upload, FTTP is the upgrade.

The difference is the last few hundred meters. On FTTC, the slow, distance-sensitive copper part sits between you and the cabinet. On FTTP there's no copper at all.

What FTTC and FTTP actually are

Openreach, which runs most of the UK's broadband lines, explains the three connection types on its fibre broadband page:

Type	Path to your home	Openreach's top download
Copper (ADSL)	Copper all the way from the exchange	up to 21 Mbps
FTTC ("part fibre", "superfast")	Fibre to the street cabinet, copper to your home	up to 76 Mbps
FTTP ("full fibre", "ultrafast")	Fibre from the exchange into your home	up to 1,600 Mbps

Openreach's consumer page quotes FTTC at up to 76 Mbps down and 15 Mbps up. Its wholesale product page for providers lists the top FTTC tier as up to 80 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, which is why you'll see both "76" and "80" quoted. Either way, that's the ceiling for FTTC, and many lines sit well below it.

There's also a middle option some providers sell: G.fast, which uses the same cabinet-and-copper layout but a faster technology on the copper. Openreach's wholesale page says it can reach up to 330 Mbps. It's much less common than either FTTC or FTTP.

Why FTTC speeds vary so much

Copper loses signal over distance. On FTTC, your speed depends on how long the copper run is between the cabinet and your home, and on the state of that wire. A home next to the cabinet may sync close to the 76–80 Mbps maximum. A home much further down the road on the same package may get a fraction of it.

Openreach says full fibre performance "isn't affected by your distance from a street cabinet," because the cabinet isn't part of the path. That's the main practical gain. FTTP plans deliver close to the speed you buy, wherever you are on the street.

For a sense of where these sit, Ofcom defines "superfast" broadband as 30 Mbit/s or more and "ultrafast" as 300 Mbit/s or more (Ofcom Connected Nations, spring 2026). FTTC can be superfast. Only FTTP (and cable) reaches ultrafast. Ofcom's same update says gigabit-capable broadband was available to 89% of UK homes in January 2026, so there's a good chance full fibre already reaches your street. Average broadband speed in the UK puts these tiers next to what households actually get.

How to tell which one you have

You can usually tell in under a minute:

• Look at where the router plugs in. If it connects to a phone socket on the wall (often with a microfilter or a faceplate with a DSL port), you're on FTTC, G.fast or copper.
• Look for an extra box. When Openreach installs full fibre, an engineer fits a small box called an optical network terminal (ONT) where the fibre enters the home. The router connects to the ONT with an Ethernet cable. An ONT means FTTP.
• Read the package name. "Full Fibre", "FTTP" and speeds above 80 Mbps point to FTTP. "Superfast" or plain "Fibre" packages with speeds of 80 Mbps or less are usually FTTC.
• Check the address. Your provider's or Openreach's availability checker shows which technologies reach your property.

Virgin Media's cable network is a different technology from both and doesn't use a phone socket. Types of internet connection explains how cable, fibre, DSL and wireless differ.

What changes on a speed test

On FTTC, expect a hard ceiling. A speed test will never pass the line's sync speed, which is set by your copper distance and capped at the package maximum. Upload is low by design: 20 Mbps at most, often less. If your result sits steady at, say, 55 Mbps every time you test on Ethernet, that's likely just what your line syncs at, not a fault.

On FTTP, the test should land near the package speed on a wired connection. On faster plans the bottleneck usually moves into your home: Wi-Fi, an old router, or a laptop's network adapter. Upload is also much higher on most full fibre packages than FTTC can offer.

To compare fairly:

1. Plug a computer into the router with an Ethernet cable.
2. Pause other downloads and streams in the house.
3. Run the SpeedMetric speed test two or three times and note download, upload and ping.

If the Wi-Fi result is far below the wired result, the line isn't the problem. Why Wi-Fi is slower than Ethernet explains the gap. If the wired result is well below what your provider promised, why a speed test is lower than advertised covers what to check before you complain.

Should you upgrade from FTTC to FTTP?

Upgrade when FTTC's limits actually bite:

• You need more than about 70 Mbps. Several 4K streams, big game downloads and video calls at once can outgrow even a good FTTC line. Is 50 Mbps good? shows what a typical FTTC result handles.
• Your FTTC line is slow because of distance. If you're far from the cabinet, FTTP fixes that problem for good.
• You need upload. Cloud backups, streaming to Twitch or uploading large files all benefit from full fibre's faster upload.
• Your line is unreliable. Old copper is more prone to faults, which FTTP removes.

If your FTTC line already gives you 60–70 Mbps and you rarely notice slowdowns, there's no urgent reason to switch. When you do, the install usually needs an engineer visit to bring the fibre into your home and fit the ONT.