CTG and Lightning Fibre Find UK Full Fibre Awareness is Still Low

A new survey of residents in housing schemes across Hastings (East Sussex), which was jointly conducted by altnet ISP Lightning Fibre, the Orbit Housing Association and the Complete Technology Group, has revealed a “stark lack of awareness” of what full fibre broadband is (51% had little to no understanding and 87% of residents wanted to learn more about it).

The results represent the first phase of the companies joint ‘Connecting Customers‘ initiative, which has been designed to improve digital inclusivity. The initiative also corroborates Ofcom’s findings that many UK households remain unaware of Social Tariffs (available to those on state benefits) and have little knowledge of alternative providers offering faster speeds at lower costs.

As part of the programme, CTG provides residents with generic information on Full Fibre. If the resident would like further information, they can follow up with any supporting ISPs available in their building, and the resident also has opportunity to receive a voucher towards living costs from CTG, on connection to Full Fibre.

In addition, Orbit customers can also benefit from its ‘Better Days Programme‘, which offers free universal services to every customer, designed to support financial inclusion, mental wellbeing, employment and skills and digital support.

Jack Packman, Orbit Regional Place Manager South, said:

“Whilst people are facing incredibly challenging cost-of-living choices, having access to reliable and robust internet access for work, education and access to digital services such as banking and health is essential for our customers.

This collaboration helps to raise awareness of the availability, reliability and affordability of Full Fibre and digital connectivity, and deliver social value for our communities.”

The press release doesn’t offer much detail on the survey results or say how many residents were involved, although the issues around low awareness of full fibre (FTTP) broadband technology are already quite well understood, but tackling it is going to take time.

Speaking of which, Ofcom recently finalised new guidelines (here) that will effectively only allow broadband ISPs to use terms like “fibre” and “full-fibre” if their network brings fibre optic cables all the way to your home (FTTP/B), which should help to end over a decade of abuse (e.g. ISPs describing slower hybrid-fibre connections like FTTC as being “fibre broadband“). But this won’t be introduced until later in 2024.