enquiries@katcommunications.co.uk 01302 260195

Full Fibre Broadband – are you Superfast or Ultrafast?

At KAT Communications we speak to businesses on a daily basis who believe they are on full fibre broadband when they are not. Full fibre broadband is exactly that, the line the broadband rides upon is solely fibre. Unlike traditional broadband (adsl) and even ‘superfast’ broadband which relies on the old copper phone line network at all, or some point of the connection.

 

So why is there this confusion?

There are numerous reasons why, but the main 3 appear to be:

  1. Most Openreach vans going around with the words ‘Superfast Fibre’ on which suggests if you have Superfast you have fibre (which you do but only from the exchange to your local street cabinet, you still need to rely on copper from the cabinet to your premises).
  2. In 2008 the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) agreed that broadband service providers could brand their products as ‘fibre’ even if only ‘fibre’ was only partly involved in the connection.
  3. A number of prominent telecom providers advertise their products as simply ‘Fibre Broadband’ when its only part fibre, thereby and in our view blurring the 2 products together. Look at the Talk Talk advert in early 2020 where it advertises Faster Fibre from £22.95 per month. This is actually for the slower Superfast product, not the Ultrafast Full fibre product. Is there no wonder customers are confused?

This confusion was touched upon in November 2018 in Parliament when the topic of when fibre isn’t full fibre was raied by Stephen Kerr Conservative MP for Stirling.

A survey by Censuswide showed that 86% of people knew that the type of cable their broadband was provided on would impact their broadband speed but 65% didn’t realise that their broadband used copper on it its journey into their property.

Anthony Temperton of KAT says “After years of the network operators trying to do everything on the cheap by using existing copper line networks that are prone to faults such as water damage its great to see the move to full-fibre ultrafast broadband. Full fibre broadband will act as the platform for businesses to benefit from so many cloud-based applications such as hosted phone systems, cloud-based storage and video conferencing such as Zoom, Teams etc.”

A 2018 report showed the UK had dropped to 35th in the World rankings for broadband speeds and typically those countries such as Spain, Portugal, Madagascar and Sweden who rate higher are the ones who made the move to full-fibre first. Currently just over 9% of the UK is connected with full fibre ultrafast broadband, this is compared to 71% in Spain and 89% in Portugal. The UK’s decision to join the full fibre party late has proved to be a poor move.

Over 3 million properties in the UK can now access full fibre broadband. At KAT, we are taking orders on a daily basis from South Yorkshire businesses in but not limited to:

  • Doncaster – Redhouse Interchange, Sidings Court, Sandall Stones Road, Balby Carr Bank, Woodfield Plantation and Hayfield Lane
  • Rotherham – Hellaby Industrial Park, Main Street Bramley, and Bradmarsh Way
  • Sheffield – Sussex Street, Smithy Wood Drive, J35a Business Park and Brightside Lane
  • Barnsley – Claycliffe Business Park, Capitol Court, and Middlewood Way

South Yorkshire businesses are benefitting today from full fibre ultrafast. No more ‘upto’ speeds, stable connections enabling them to embracce everything the cloud has to offer. With new areas being switched on weekly, do not assume because your existing broadband provider has not told you about it that you cannot get full fibre broadband. Contact the KAT team today for a coverage update.

With speed options of up 1GB per second with no usage limits full-fibre broadband is the broadband most businesses have been waiting for.

Back To Top