BT FTTP Broadband: How It Works & Best Full Fibre Broadband Deals

BT offers full fibre (FTTP) broadband with a fibre optic cable all the way to your home. Find out how to get FTTP broadband from BT.

In the UK, BT now offers full fibre (FTTP) broadband with availability in more than 5 million homes. Making use of a fibre optic connection all the way into your home, it gives you faster download speeds of up to 900Mbps. You’ll also benefit from a more reliable connection and lower amounts of latency.

In this article, we’ll look at BT’s FTTP broadband service in the UK. We’ll start by looking at how FTTP broadband works and at the FTTP broadband plans currently available on BT. We’ll also look at the availability of BT’s FTTP service and the other benefits of getting BT Broadband such as the Stay Fast Guarantee that’s included.

What is FTTP Broadband?

In the UK, FTTP or full fibre broadband is the next generation of home broadband technology. It makes use of a fibre optic connection all the way into your home. This differs from normal fibre broadband where the fibre optic connection only goes to a cabinet near your home (this is also known as fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband).

Compared to normal fibre broadband, there are four main benefits of choosing FTTP broadband:

1. You can access download speeds of up to 900Mbps. With FTTP broadband, you’ll be able to access much faster download speeds. On average, the fastest download speed available is 900Mbps. This is more than 13 times faster than regular fibre broadband which usually caps out with an average download speed of around 67Mbps.
2. Your broadband service will have more capacity. With FTTP, you can have more devices sharing your home broadband connection without the speeds slowing down for other people in your home.
3. You’ll get a more reliable service. FTTP uses a fibre optic cable all the way into your home. For this reason, it isn’t susceptible to the same noise and interference problems that can sometimes affect normal fibre broadband.
4. You’ll get a lower latency connection. With FTTP, you’ll normally get a lower amount of ‘lag’ or latency on your connection. According to Ofcom (the UK’s telecommunications regulator), BT’s full fibre broadband has a typical latency of around 7-8ms. This compares with 10-12ms on normal fibre broadband and 15-35ms on normal copper broadband. It should give you a much better experience when you’re playing games online.

On BT, full fibre (FTTP) broadband is currently available in more than 5 million homes. You can check the availability where you live by entering your postcode on BT’s website.

BT FTTP Broadband Plans

At present, BT offers a choice of Full Fibre (FTTP) broadband plans from £31.99 per month. You can choose from the following three options:

• Full Fibre 100 gives you an average download speed of 150Mbps and an average upload speed of 30Mbps. It’s generally the cheapest way of getting access to FTTP broadband on BT and is currently available for £31.99 per month.
• Full Fibre 500 is the mid-range FTTP broadband plan. It gives you an average download speed of 500Mbps and an average upload speed of 73Mbps. At present, you can get the Full Fibre 500 plan for £37.99 per month.
• Full Fibre 900 is BT’s fastest FTTP plan. It gives you an average download speed of 900Mbps and an average upload speed of 110Mbps. Currently, you’ll pay £52.99 per month for the Full Fibre 900 plan.

BT’s full fibre (FTTP) plans are shown in the following table:

Service	Average Speed	Contract Length	Upfront Price	Monthly Price
Full Fibre 100	150Mbps download	24 month contract	£29.99	£31.99/month with £50 reward card
Full Fibre 500	500Mbps download	24 month contract	£29.99	£37.99/month with £50 reward card
Full Fibre 900	910Mbps download	24 month contract	£29.99	£52.99/month with £50 reward card

See all BT Full Fibre Plans →

You can add a home phone service from an extra £5/month using BT’s Digital Voice technology.

At addresses with an existing FTTP connection, you can still get BT’s normal fibre broadband plans. These are available from £30.99 per month. These plans won’t allow you to benefit from the faster download speeds on FTTP. However, you’ll still benefit from improved reliability and lower latency of FTTP technology.

Service	Average Speed	Contract Length	Upfront Price	Monthly Price
Fibre Essential	36Mbps download	24 month contract	£29.99	£30.99/month
Fibre 1	50Mbps download	24 month contract	£29.99	£31.99/month with £70 reward card
Fibre 2	67Mbps download	24 month contract	£29.99	£31.99/month with £100 reward card

To see which of the above plans are available at your address, enter your postcode on BT’s website.

Coverage & Availability

At present, BT’s full fibre (FTTP) broadband is available in around 5.2 million homes across the UK. This equates to around 18% of UK households.

To see whether BT’s full fibre broadband is available where you live, you can use the availability checker on their website. This will show you whether the Full Fibre broadband plans are available where you live.

Check BT Full Fibre Broadband Availability →

If you’re not currently able to get full fibre broadband, further locations are being added very quickly. For instance, in the past 3 months, another 600,000 homes have gained access to FTTP technology. BT expects to make FTTP broadband available to 25 million homes by the end of 2026.

BT Broadband Features

Stay Fast Guarantee

All of BT’s full fibre broadband plans come with the Stay Fast Guarantee for Full Fibre. This is a minimum guaranteed download speed for your connection. If the speed of the connection to your hub drops below a guaranteed minimum, you’ll be able to claim a £20 gift card as compensation from BT.

The Stay Fast Guarantee speeds are as follows:

• Full Fibre 100 has a Stay Fast Guaranteed download speed of 100Mbps.
• Full Fibre 300 has a Stay Fast Guaranteed download speed of 150Mbps.
• Full Fibre 500 has a Stay Fast Guaranteed download speed of 250Mbps.
• Full Fibre 900 has a Stay Fast Guaranteed download speed of 455Mbps.

In addition, there’s a Stay Fast Guarantee upload speed of 10Mbps on all Full Fibre plans. For more information, see the BT website.

Online Security

All BT Broadband plans include Virus Protect security by McAfee. This helps to keep your devices safe from malware. On all full fibre plans, you’ll get Virus Protect included for use on up to 15 devices at the same time.

You’ll also get 1,000GB of online storage on the BT Cloud. This gives you a secure place to back up your files online such as photos, videos and other documents.

Complete WiFi

If you’re looking for a guaranteed wi-fi signal in every room of your home, you can add BT’s Complete WiFi service. This gives you a mesh wi-fi network at home, with Complete Wi-Fi Discs that boost the signal from your Smart Hub 2 router. You’ll also get the Complete Wi-Fi Guarantee which gives you £100 back if you’re not able to get Wi-Fi in every room.

The Complete WiFi service costs £12/month and can be added to any of BT’s full fibre broadband plans. For more information, see our BT Complete Wi-Fi review.

Hybrid Connect

For an extra £7/month, you can add BT’s Hybrid Connect service. This gives you “unbreakable home wi-fi” with a 4G-based broadband backup provided by EE.

Should there ever be a fault with your fibre broadband connection, it will seamlessly switch over to the 4G connection on your Hybrid Connect. This will keep all of your devices connected to the internet without you needing to lift a finger to change any settings.

Once the disruption to your fibre broadband service is resolved, your connection will then switch back automatically to fibre.

BT Mobile Offers

As a customer of BT Broadband, you’ll get a £5/month discount on all BT Mobile plans. This means you can get a 5G-ready SIM card for as little as £6/month on BT Mobile:

Network	Minutes	Texts	Data	Monthly Cost
No price plans could be found matching this criteria.

See BT Mobile SIM Only Deals →

On all BT Mobile SIM cards costing £15/month or more, you’ll also get inclusive access to the BT Sport app on your mobile phone. This allows you to watch all four BT Sport channels with live action from the Premier League, UEFA Champions League and more.

Switching to BT Broadband

If you’re currently using another broadband provider, it’s easy switching your broadband service to BT.

Start by ordering your new BT Broadband plan online. If it’s your first time getting FTTP broadband, an engineer visit will be scheduled to install the fibre to your home. The engineer will also install an Openreach modem (ONT) which is required to be able to use FTTP broadband.

In most cases, BT will contact your old provider to cancel your old broadband service for you. This is unless you’re a Virgin Media customer, in which case you’ll need to contact them directly to cancel.

On the switchover date, you’ll need to attach your new Smart Hub router to the Openreach modem to complete the installation of your service.

For step-by-step instructions on how to switch to BT Broadband, please select your current broadband provider from the drop-down menu below:

For more information, see our full guide to switching home broadband providers in the UK.

More Information

For more information about BT’s FTTP broadband service, please see the official BT website.