Traditional - FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) Overview

FTTC is a half way house between ADSL (using copper all the way from the exchange to your premises) and FTTP (using fibre all of the way). The copper broadband signal degrades over distance but the fibre signal does not so the greater the distance covered by fibre the better.

All telephony radiates from the BT exchange via underground cables to green street cabinets. From these it is either carried underground or via telegraph poles to your premises. By switching from copper to the cabinet to fibre it is possible to drastically reduce the copper length and provide superior performance.

With ADSL the copper terminating equipment is in the exchange. With FTTC this is moved out to the street cabinet. Unfortunately there is insufficient free space in the existing cabinets so a new one has to be built alongside the original. When you see this happening to the cabinet servicing your premises you can be sure FTTC will soon be available.

The VDSL2 protocol used between the cabinet and your premises is even more sensitive to degradation over distance so it is important you are close to the cabinet. If you are not close enough for a 67Mb service BT Wholesale will step it down to 50Mb or 36mb. If that isn‘t achievable the order will be declined so you are back to ADSL as the only DSL option.

With a down channel speed of <67Mb you can get an 18mb up channel. With a 18Mb up channel there is enough bandwidth for most small and medium sized businesses to run their full gamut of services.

Although the FTTC infrastructure is owned exclusively by BT Wholesale it is available though all of their leading retail and aggregation partners, not just BT Retail under their fibre brand. It is an engineer installed service on a 1 or 2 year contract.

LineBroker will check availability, recommend an appropriate service provider and supply both speed estimates and costs.