Broadband ISP YouFibre Launch 8Gbps UK Home Fibre Package UPDATE
Internet service provider YouFibre, which predominantly harnesses Netomnia’s growing UK Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based network (currently available to 600,000 premises), has today officially taken the wrappings off one of the country’s fastest 8Gbps (Gigabits per second) broadband packages for homes!
Regular ISPreview readers won’t be surprised by this because the boss of YouFibre’s parent network, Jeremy Chelot, revealed his plan a week ago as part of an interview with the CEO of another provider (here). Jeremy said: “Everybody right now is making a headline about doing 2Gbps. I can do 8Gbps, so why not do a headline with 8Gbps,” before adding that it was about having a bit of “fun” to show what’s possible (marketing plays a role).
The reality is that the vast majority of consumers don’t NEED and couldn’t even harness (explainer) this sort of speed, although it’s worth noting that some other countries have had 10Gbps tiers for quite a few years (e.g. Singapore). Similarly, YouFibre are by no means the first UK ISP to offer such a ridiculously fast tier to consumers either, with others like B4RN having launched a more expensive 10Gbps option back in 2020, but their coverage is very limited.
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The reality today is that, for most providers, 1-3Gbps packages seems to be a more common target in the UK market, which is partly because it’s difficult to feed enough capacity to meet the performance expectations of even faster tiers. But this is less of an issue for YouFibre as, given the price and realities of such a service, they aren’t anticipating a particularly significant level of take-up.
The 8Gbps Package (symmetric)
The new package costs £99 per month on a 24-month term, which may seem expensive, but it really isn’t for this level of performance. Just for a quick comparison, Zzoomm charges £54.95 per month for 2Gbps, CommunityFibre charges £49 for 3Gbps and B4RN will give you 10Gbps (8Gbps is probably more realistic for the advertised average) for £150 per month plus £360 setup.
According to Jeremy, the new package is being supported by a “beast” of a router, although at the time of writing we haven’t yet got the full specification sheet for this. Naturally, any device able to support a 10Gbps transfer will have to be very capable indeed. But we should point out that, per the usual advertising rules, the new service is being promoted as having an average advertised rate of 7Gbps.
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Take note that you can optionally add a mesh WiFi system to this package for an extra £7 per month, while adding a Static IP costs £5 and adding a VoIP Phone service with unlimited evening and weekend calls to UK Landlines is an additional £3.
UPDATE 8:10am
The included router is an Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000, which typically retails around the £500 mark. Not bad for a package with no setup fee! This is an Ultrafast WiFi 6E (802.11ax) device with dual 10G WAN/LAN ports and one 2.5G WAN port (they use the 10G LAN/WAN port to link with the ONT, rather than the WAN one).
Router Tech Specs
Model Name
GT-AXE16000Network Standard
WiFi 6 (802.11ax)
WiFi 6E (802.11ax)Product Segment
AXE16000 ultimate AX/AXE performanceAX technology
YesData Rate
2.4GHz AX: 4×4 (Tx/Rx) 1024 QAM 20/40MHz, up to 1148Mbps
5G-1Hz AX: 4×4 (Tx/Rx) 1024 QAM 20/40/80/160MHz, up to 4804Mbps
5G-2Hz AX: 4×4 (Tx/Rx) 1024 QAM 20/40/80/160MHz, up to 4804Mbps
6GHz AX: 4×4 (Tx/Rx) 1024 QAM 20/40/80/160MHz, up to 4804MbpsAntenna
External antenna x 8 (non-detachable)
Internal antenna x 4Transmit/Receive
2.4GHz 4×4
5GHz-1 4×4
5GHz-2 4×4
6GHz 4×4Processor
2.0GHz quad-core processorMemory
256MB NAND flash and 2GB DDR4 RAMBoosts speed
OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access)
Beamforming: standard-based and universal
1024-QAM high data rate
20/40/80/160 MHz bandwidth* The 160MHz bandwidth may be unavailable in the 5GHz band in some regions / countries due to regulatory restrictions.
Operating Frequency
Quad-band Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz-1 / 5 GHz-2 / 6 GHz
Ports
1 x 2.5 Gigabit WAN Port
2 x 10 Gigabit WAN/LAN Ports
4 x Gigabit LAN Ports
1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Port
1 x USB 2.0 PortButton
WPS Button, LED Button, Reset Button, Power SwitchLED Indicator
Power x 1
2.4G x 1
5GHz-1 x 1
5GHz-2 x 1
6G x 1
10GE Port x 1
LAN x 1
WAN x 1Power Supply
AC Input : 110V~240V(50~60Hz)
DC Output : 19 V with max. 3.42 A current ； 19.5 V with max. 3.33 A current
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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They’ve had a bit of a rebrand too 🙂 https://www.youfibre.com/
The logo looks very similar to Curve Card…
The simplified logo looks nice but it’s weird they went with green as their color, it was also weird that Community Fibre decided to go with the same color
The news that this was coming has literally narrowed my search for new houses 😀
I cannot wait!
Best to be prepared for when Hollywood get with the groove and launch 128K content at 1,000 FPS!
Although I want that to come through a TV that blasts air, water and smells for the full immersive effect. Might need to settle for an occasional very light spray of water unless it’s mounted outside.
Hi,
It seems odd that it has narrowed your choice of houses.
Surely if you needed 8Gbps+ then a new provider offering it would increase your choice?
Narrowed in that it’s now a requirement for the place to be on Netomnia’s network I imagine
Very nice. I’m still waiting to have any fibre, they seem to be slowly building it. Saw some activity by a new fibre cab yesterday, first for about 5 months lol.
Netomnia don’t use cabinets so that was probably someone else.
Mark, is this router just for the 8Gbps plan or for 2Gbps plan also?
I hope so as my eero only has a 1gb port
Yes this router is only for the 8Gig plan
On the 2Gbps plan you get this, which is also used for their WiFi mesh service.
https://www.asus.com/uk/networking-iot-servers/whole-home-mesh-wifi-system/zenwifi-wifi-systems/asus-zenwifi-pro-xt12/
Another beast.
Just ordered at 8.00am on the dot this morning, very nice lady on the phone said I was the first to place the upgrade order!
I wish i knew i could do that, i emails support
Thank you Andrew. Most of the U.K. want to be like Andrew (or Carl ;))
you ordered the 8Gbit service? you mad man you!
I hope you come and review it for us
Do us a speedtest when you have it installed please – would be keen to see the awesomeness 🙂
for those who wanted to see the speedtest here you go
https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/c9e23bcb-b860-49c9-a7eb-3bab875eb28a
Lovely! What speeds did you get on 1gig? 950?
Yes about 940 ish up and down
I’m curious to know if they proved out it can hit the levels they claim. They came out on the 21st, couldn’t even test, and still haven’t provided any information as to what they’re doing about it, only asking me to prove it out. I already did my part.
Good job YouFibre 🙂
Thank you
An interesting upgrade!
Coincidentally I have YouFibre’s 1gbps package and already purchased that router myself.
Wow! This is really cool! And the new website looks really good too. Well done YouFibre, just need to build to my street!
Jeremy was on LinkedIn where he claimed they could do 10Gbps – he wrote a poem about it (very odd indeed…).
Now its 8Gbps.
What else isn’t true?
Some of these comments looked like they’ve been added to support the article IMO.
Their network is built on XGS-PON which is actually 10Gbps. What you are actually buying here is a 10Gbps product. However, when you factor in the overheads of PON, 10Gbps yields 8.4Gbps. Hence why it’s branded as 8Gbps. This is as fast as XGS-PON will go. That’s a fact.
10 Gbs they offering since, probably beginning, but it’s more expensive. When asked, i was ~ £120- 140. can’t remember anymore.
As above, the reality of 10Gbps on XGS-PON is that in the real-world it’s more like 8-7Gbps, which is why they’ve opted to promote it this way. Not to mention the many other limitations on the wider web and in your home:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/12/why-buying-gigabit-broadband-doesnt-always-deliver-1gbps.html
I think you’d have a better argument for complaining about B4RN promoting 10Gbps, when in fact they also suffer from the same issues in real-world use and so will be more like 8-7Gbps – assuming no capacity limits. But who cares if it’s 7-8Gbps or 10Gbps, either way you aren’t going to notice the difference :).
Mark at 7Gbps it would take over two minutes to download Starfield, this is not acceptable. At a true 10Gbps it would take only 1 minute and 40 seconds.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was a hefty download. Steam seems to tap out at about 2.5 Gbps though best case which is fair enough.
What are the overheads? I have always wondered why a 1gig connection comes out at 940 even tho the lines can handle 8000
The download needs to be wrapped in headers and footers so that the routers, switches and computers in the path know what to do with it.
On the usual transport you’ve 1460 bytes of payload, 40 bytes of TCP and IP headers, 18 bytes of Ethernet framing.
1460 bytes of goodput, 58 bytes of overhead.
It’s alright for some, I’m stuck with crappy gigabit broadband. It’s like living in the stone ages.
Oh poor sod! –
67/18 here at the office.
12/1 at home.
I feel your pain Bruh
@BTMan, some people are still using ADSL.
Good stuff. Means you can download a music track in 0.000000001 seconds and a movie in 0.00001 seconds. Yes, because those measurements are useful (insert sarcasm emoji here).
The number of people who’ll really utilise the speed is tiny – SOHO or WFH customers whose job is videoediting, games or other large software development. But what of it? People buy cars with performance they can’t and won’t ever use, houses bigger than they’ll ever make use of, meals that they don’t then finish. I’m happy for anybody who orders an 8 Gbps connection just because they want it.
@Anon, I don’t even utilise the 500Mb/s I have, only got it because of the price. The other half was on 1Gb/s for a couple of years, and have now dropped to 100Mb/s. I doubt very few people really utilise anything above 100Mb/s
They just think they need it or doing it because they can
Oh man! So now I’ve got to upgrade my PFSense and switches soon, only thing that would really take advantage of that is my computer. I’ll wait for the hardware to get cheaper once this really becomes mainstream
This is a beast! But will it get locked down software or totally open?
£599 from the Manufacture, wonder how much You fibre brought in for?
Still waiting in Wrexham Jeremy, any news of the restart?
The Wrexham roll out has been abandoned.
Not abandoned…Restarting in September! Unfortunately, we had to swap the contractor…It happens! We are coming for Wrexham!
I can’t disclose the price 🙂
Jeremy, any idea when you will finish Bedford please?
It’s been “live” on netomnia site for 2 months now but I still can’t order it.
Thank you. Desperately want to be a customer!!
I can understand why they are locking people into a 24 month contract for this, But they could send the router back out to someone else when they get it returned
What is your postcode in Bedford?
Wonder if they will give me a discount without the crazy £599 router 😀
I contacted YouFibre and the answer was no.
It’s a shame really as my Asus router with multiple 2.5gb ports is perfect for the job. It would probably be the tipping point to switch from the 1gb service.
In some places Youfibre is mission impossible.
In my street , Wisbech(PE13). Signed contract 2 years ago. Last February put cables in poles. 2/3 of town connected. Beginning of July they came again and put more cables in poles.
run out contract over than year ago as kept promising that will install in few months…
Still no news…
“The included router is an Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000, ”
Dang! – That is £475,99 on Asus’s website. Not bad at all!
Had a few issues with my 1gb service since moving over to you fibre in May. our 1gb service never breaks into a sweat.. I would prefer to see issues with routing and latency resolved over an 8gb service.
There latency is not as good as OR. I have both in fttp and you fibre is nearly double my or/zen fttp for latency…
I’m not bashing you fibre but this is my experience at present of the service.
Of course this is crazy overkill that will be bottlenecked by 99% of the internet, but it’s this sort of stuff that will get gigabit packages’ prices down to under £20/month, so more power to them.
Faster upload is always welcome but most home users won’t own kit that can saturate synchronous 8gbs.
I’m looking forward to my toob synchronous 900mbs and now need to find a cheap cloud provider for my backups 🙂
Be interesting to see how this is being delivered as with overheads, XGSPON can only deliver around 7.5gbs and saturate a full PON.
Also, compared to some of the larger telcos there is 0 caching and peering is mostly linx. The DNS platform will be something one of the guys cobbled together on a couple Linux boxes in one location. So although the speed is great the overall service isn’t that amazing compared which over time will become more apparent.
I’ve seen XGSPON deliver 8.3 Gbps. I’m not sure where this 7.5 figure comes from but I don’t recognise it. FEC and framing overheads account for about 15% of the 10 Gbps.
‘The DNS platform will be something one of the guys cobbled together on a couple Linux boxes in one location.’
The DNS servers used are anycast.
‘Also, compared to some of the larger telcos there is 0 caching and peering is mostly linx.’
Most peering across the board is across the LINX LANs. I see peering via London and Manchester alongside transit from London, Manchester and Edinburgh.
Have you used the YouFibre network at all and verified your thoughts or are you looking at PeeringDB and taking it as gospel?
Anycast servers where? Two locations at most? Also confirmed no CDN just linx. What good is linx and transit when you’re wanting to watch 4k Disney+?
8.3gb with what traffic? Iperf which is just TCP/UDP packets? Provide that to a business using MPLS/SD-WAN and you will not get 8.3gb.
I can get 10gb between switches in my house, doesn’t mean it has any practical use. It’s marketing nonsense
Yes. Using TCP and UDP. If you wanted you could use a Zscaler tunnel inside an IPSEC VPN inside SD-WAN inside MPLS but the PON itself is still delivering 8.5G before Ethernet overheads and 8.3 after: not its fault there’s loads of overhead on the payload.
Do you anticipate a rush of businesses signing up to this residential product to run SD-WAN over it given you’d need an applianced intended for datacentre usage?
Your numbers are edge case. Nearly all YouFibre traffic is TCP, UDP and ICMP.
Never did answer this.
‘What good is linx and transit when you’re wanting to watch 4k Disney+?’
It works the same way any other 25 Mbps transfer across LINX/transit would. YouFibre have 100 Gbit links into each of the primary LANs at London and Manchester, 10 Gbit into Scotland and Wales and 50,000 customers using them alongside any private peering and transit. I think they can manage a proportion of the customer base wanting to watch 4k Disney+.
Jeremy … any chance you can expand the network to Great Barr B43 area ??? 🙂
We’ve had youfibre 1 Gbps for a few months now. It has been amazing moving from 30 Mbps FTTC to this. Tempted to upgrade to the 2 gig package but honestly I think the package we have at the moment is satisfying our family’s requirements.
Pointless unless you have the infrastructure and devices that will support it. I’m on YF 1gb/1gb… can’t see the point of upgrading at the moment. I wish they would sort out latency issues first. It will make me think again when the contract is up.
While many are questioning the ‘need’ for such speeds, the real winner here is the price. 8Gbps as a headline fo £100/month, ok but look at the more normal options,
£80/month for BT asym 1000/120 FTTP or £28/month for Youfibre symetrical 1000/1000 FTTP
Ive made my choice, being installed at the end of the month.