The Misery of Diminishing Choice in G.fast UK Broadband Areas
Hundreds of thousands of premises on Openreach’s increasingly forgotten G.fast (SOGFAST) broadband network are being left to suffer the misery of diminishing ISP choice as providers scrap their old packages in favour of newer, faster and more reliable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) services. But those who can’t access full fibre are being left neglected.
First, a bit of context. Before the FTTP rollout took centre stage in 2018, Openreach initially attempted to squeeze more out of their existing copper lines by deploying hybrid fibre G.fast technology from their PCP street cabinets, which were fed by fibre (copper was used for the final run into homes) and offered speeds up to around 300Mbps. The service ended up being rolled out to 2.83 million premises before it was shelved in favour of a focus on FTTP in 2019 (here).
The rapid expansion of FTTP networks is great and Openreach’s network alone now reaches around 12 million premises, but many of those in G.fast areas have yet to be covered by the new network. According to data supplied to ISPreview by Thinkbroadband, which removes G.fast from their database as FTTP appears, coverage of the service was down to 2.4 million premises in October 2021 (i.e. G.fast areas with no FTTP alternative).
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The latest figures for October 2023 show 1.9 million premises with G.fast and 0.8 million of those are said to have FTTP from someone else (any operator) as an option. If we then exclude G.fast areas that have both FTTP (any operator) and Virgin Media’s cable (HFC) network as alternative options, then the number of premises left with G.fast as the fastest option becomes 390,000. Still a huge gap left to fill.
Diminishing ISP Choice
The big problem here is that if you’re in one of those areas where G.fast is left as the fastest broadband option available, then your choice of ISP has now become extremely limited and in some cases you might only be able to get the slowest 160Mbps tier (even if your line supports 300Mbps).
Until recently consumers could at least bank on BT and EE still offering G.fast packages (they’re generally the cheerleaders for Openreach products), but all that changed with the recent branding switch (here). Now if consumers in areas where G.fast is the fastest option put their postcode into BT and EE’s websites, then the best they’ll be offered is significantly slower FTTC or ADSL2+ tiers.
The story is much the same at Plusnet (though they never officially sold G.fast), Zen Internet, iDNET and the list goes on (Vodafone never did G.fast either). The only major ISP left still offering G.fast in all the areas we tested is currently Sky Broadband (well done Sky), but you’ll only be able to take their 145Mbps tier and that’s hard luck if you wanted to switch from a 300Mbps plan on a different provider.
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However, we did get mixed results when it came to testing TalkTalk and Shell Energy, which returned positive results for some G.fast areas and negative results for others. At the time of writing, we still don’t know why there was such a variation (it’s not an issue of SOGFAST support), but it may have something to do with localised network capacity issues. So just be aware that these two are a bit hit-and-miss (credits to our forum members).
Existing customers with a G.fast service aren’t currently affected by this (unless you fancy switching ISP) and it is possible that the odd ISP might still take you on, albeit only if you go through the irritating hassle of phoning up the provider’s sales line. But most people will never go any further than the postcode entry box (availability checker) on a website.
However, aside from those mentioned earlier, there are still a few other ISPs around that do cater for G.fast – at least for now. For example, Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) offer plans up to 160Mbps, while File Sanctuary offers up to 300Mbps, and it’s the same for a few more providers – 1310 (300Mbps), Breezetel (300Mbps), Distant Voice (300Mbps), Northern Telecom (300Mbps) and Stream Networks (300Mbps). But many of those are more business than consumer orientated.
The reality is that G.fast was a short-lived product that never managed to fully deliver on its promises and got overtaken by the inevitable march toward full fibre, which Openreach finally recognised needed to happen – even if it took some competition, regulatory pressures and the best part of a decade to actually admit that. But saying that won’t help those who remain stuck in the aforementioned situation.
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The ISP options for G.fast are only going to continue shrinking, and we can only hope that FTTP arrives fast enough to replace it before there are no options left. The fact that even BT and EE have stopped promoting it online is really quite telling, as they’re usually the last-ditch backstop for such products. Ironically, you can still get ancient ADSL packages from BT, but not G.fast.
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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Good journalism. Gfast could have filled the gap on difficult to reach properties
Difficult to reach properties are already excluded from G.fast due to its nature which is very short distance from cabinet they can operate.
yep, gfast was a solution in search of a problem. It solved nothing and continues to do so, to this day.
wasn’t g.fast supposed to be “FTTdp” anyway. Seem to remember reading an article (perhaps on this esteemed website) with photos from Openreach.
I guess it never happened because the beancounters decided it was too expensive, not because the engineers likely pointed out that in almost all cases it makes no sense to run fibre 99% of the way and continue to use expensive outdoor hardened electronics to replace a piece of glass.
G.Fast only really offered higher than VDSL speeds on very short lines (<100m in length roughly). Speeds rapidly tailed off (look at speed to line length charts). It's designed for metropolitan areas or a solution with mini-DSLAMS placed in draw pits or on top of poles (which Openreach certainly did have plans to do at *some* point before it effectively got abandoned in favour of FTTP).
In my personal opinion, Openreach definitely made the right choice to switch to FTTP. G.Fast would have only ever been a short-term life extension for short-length copper lines. The writing was on the wall for G.Fast and Copper before it really ever got off the ground I personally think.
Clarification to above – about 100m referring to “near 1 gig FTTP speeds”. I think it starts to converge with VDSL2 around about 300m in length, ish.
FTTdp never happened because it depended on CPE providing power to the DSLAM, and G.fast CPE capable of supplying so-called “reverse power” remained expensive and hard to get. If suitable CPE had become cheap, then perhaps Openreach would have done FTTdp, because it lets them do a significant part of the FTTP rollout without needing the expensive premises visits for the last leg.
As it is, with the cost of reverse power CPE staying high, and the support issues around “wires-only” with CPE having to supply reverse power (bearing in mind that a CPE with a noisy PSU will now transmit that to your neighbours via the reverse power), it’s cheaper for OR to roll out FTTP than to do FTTdp.
Some of us on vdsl/fttc from OR have had no options, and fttp is waaay in the future 2026+, we never seem to get a mention anywhere, but then it would probably be an embarassment to some ‘agencies’ that and the fact that the not so superfast, barely fast has minimum guarnteed speeds dropping year by year, currently only 12-13 Mbs down 30% on last year – where does this figure in the progress propoganda, let alone honesty?
I took a 160/30 g.fast line from Zen in 2018 (soon after it became available on the Tamworth exchange) but retained my Vodafone 80/20 VDSL2 line as backup. G.fast proved to be very stable and despite a circa 280M line length I regraded to the 330/50 with Zen and after a nightmare process that involved some of their top “techs” and a visit from OpenReach it has been absolutely rock solid ever since, I cancelled the VF line in favour of a 4G backup soon after. It came as no surprise that Zen stopped selling the product soon after, thankfully whilst I now have limited prospect of switching provider my contract (now outside of its minimum 2 year term) with Zen keeps me on the same (£59.99 P/M) price indefinitely. OR seem to be working on FTTP rollout in the area but with no altnet competition and widespread Virgin Media coverage in the area I’ll be surprised if I see a CBT appear at the top of the pole opposite any time soon.
I’d wager that there’s no more than half a dozen lines connected to the same g.fast pod as me, my VDSL availability status regularly changes due to the large number of lines connected to my serving cabinet – ironic considering the alternative sat 3 metres away in a vitually unused state!
I’m in same boat as Adam. I’m with Zen and went with their 160/30 and switched to their 330/50 at 59.99 a month but had no issues except when someone else on the board had problems knocking others offline.
I’ve been told if I want to not pay for landlines I have to drop to 80/20 package as no longer providing g.fast and looking at other providers it’s exactly the same.
We can’t get fttp yet and been told it will be another 2 years (2025/2026) before we could see it.
So yeh stuck with Zen on the 330 package until FTTP comes along.
Interesting! What happens if you’re still on G.Fast with a landline come 2025 – I guess you’ll be forced to accept SOGEA and slower speeds? Of course, hopefully you’ll have full fibre by then!
I’m also on a fixed price contract with Zen. I get 300Mbps out of the line. I phoned Zen recently to cancel my phone line and was also told that I’d have to downgrade to FTTC to do so. Don’t fancy dropping from 300 to 80!
I could go to Virgin Media but that’s a road I’ve been down before and not one I want to go down again.
SOGEA G.fast exists SoGfast and is showing as Green in areas where the older WBC products have been withdrawn
Zen might have made a choice to not sell G.fast with voice over broadband and that is their choice
My dad was stuck in this trap, barely any G.Fast providers left and soaring prices, placed an order for a FTTC VDSL instead on a deal from a comparisson site. Cancelled a few days later with a sorry you can’t do a port and switch from G.Fast to VDSL. The current ISP could do it but would only do it for a new 18 month VDSL contract, and again higher prices than the best offers. In the end it took an email to the current ISP’s CEO office and they agreed to apply bill credit to match the offer we’d found elsewhere, but still on an 18 month contract with them. Satisfactory but an absolute pain.
G.fast is a bit of hit-and-miss, from what I have heard and seen, it is fine if you are virtually onto of the cabinet and even then there can be problems. I don’t think we ever had it here, I know of someone who did in another town, and they said it was fine most of the time, but sometimes it would just not work at all. G.fast is also not cheap.
But it is crazy for providers not to offer it for people who want the faster speed and can’t get FTTP. but it does sound about right to be honest.
All this stuff about we care for the customer is a load of poop, all they care about is making HUGE profits.
UnchainedISP do offer SoGfast 160/30 and 330/50 (no line rental WLR) but it not on their website yet – have to request via contact us support ticket.
I am with UnchainedIP Sogfast 160/30 upgraded from SoGEA 80/20 (going to stick with it until FTTP come along maybe in 2024, 2025, 2026 or never will)
What do they charge?
Last time I spoke to them it was a lot it’s why at the time I went to Sky for g.fast but regretted it and switched to AAISP – so for me to do that it had to be more than £60 a month. You also have to e-mail AAISP if you want g.fast as it’s all manual ordering
@ Ben you have contact Keith – he will tell u the pricing. I am not allow to say so!
BT and EE should be ashamed of themselves for removing option of Gfast but they could offering Sogfast but decided not to offer it anymore also Plusnet the only ISP refused to have Gfast product never sold it in the first place.
They never sold a product someone below has said they had.. They did sell it Phil you need to stop making things up
@ I love Starlink
BT EE did sold G.fast with WLR before they no longer sold it now when it become Sogfast they not bother to sell it.
I had a Plusnet G.Fast connection 330/30 and it was great ! Now with EE but still fantastic . While its around there is no need for me to upgrade to fttp for the same speeds .
Plusnet never sold G.fast never is!
Phil ,
I can guarantee you i had G.Fast with Plusnet . Not everything is published as plusnet trialled a number of customers with G.Fast
We never got G .fast. So our fastest option was vdsl2.
Fortunately Virgin cabled our street in 2018.
BRSK showed up this week, so at least a fttp alternative is arriving.
GFast never realty took off. It is expensive to keep multiple options going so it is no surprise that ISP’s are discontinuing it
According to Openreach it was a great thing. Providers should not scrap it until the majority of people can get FTTP. I know G.fast was not great, needed to be virtually on top of the cabinet for it to work, and then it can be hit-and-miss. If someone is that close to the cabinet then they should be able to get a good speed on normal FTTC, around 80ish Mb/s is it not? Ample for many people, maybe that was the problem, people realised the extra cost for slightly faster with G.fast was not worth it.
Most people can get FTTP. Keeping the legacy GFAST service going for a small number of people makes no real economic sense
I suspect most ISP’s given the number of properties it passes and the likely take up rate (you just got to look at some of the altnets full fibre take up) simply just don’t think it’s worth the time and resources.
So much glee originally from those with G.fast available while the rest of us was stuck on slow ADSL/VDSL, now the tables have turned and we now have FTTP. The glee is all mine 🙂
Yes! I could only get 60/10 before and the cab next to us (50M down the road) had a g.fast pod for years- and for some reason Lightspeed can’t do their houses but we now have 1Gbps… so I agree and share with you!
What are you on about? Why would anyone have glee over someone else not being able to access a broadband product?
Rubbing people’s faces in it is just childish. Shame you can’t download a life no matter how fast your connection is.
Glee? I have not seen it myself. I chat to someone who uses G.fast, and they have been saying about downgrading to normal FTTc due to price.
Would be nice if they focused on area they didn’t even give fibre to the cabinet and left us with 9/0.89 speeds as no one can give us anything better.
Starlink can – if you are willing to pay for it.
Like most areas CF will be here before BT FTTP gets here.
ILS, why must you turn ISPReview into a house of lies?
Openreach have ~11.5 million premises FFTP coverage versus ~3 million for CityFibre.
And how many outside of London, Leeds, Manchester or B’ham connurbations?
A gnats whisker?
So what’s the Geopgraphic covereage as a a % of the UK’s 248,532 sqkm?
G.Fast was always a short sighted push by BT’s ex-CEO after their stubborn refusal to commit to upgrading cabinets to FTTP for the longest time. It’s an embarrassment that it took splitting off OR entirely from BT for them to start taking things seriously, suppose that’s what happens when you have a monopoly running the network infrastructure for the longest time.
On the other hand, although G.fast customers seem to be stuck with a max of 160 Mbps, the UK average download speed is around 70 Mbps. I’m not feeling their pain, I must admit.
From a business point of view if you have near zero competition it makes sense to sweat as much out of your current assets as possible. It took Alt Nets and the Regulator to force BT into action
It was only when BT faces competition they took the roll out of FTTP seriously until then they were just dragging their heels
Now BT are getting a bit of the opposite with some consumers dragging their heals and anting to hold onto their old analogue lines
“It was only when BT faces competition they took the roll out of FTTP seriously until then they were just dragging their heels”
You might think so, but BT did little for a decade and a half whilst faced with competition from VM and predecessors offering far better speeds to around 40% of the market, so I don’t think your argument holds up.
I believe it had much to do with their contractual commitments to BDUK. openreach had to put a halt to their early commercial FTTP program to meet the contracts. It’s no coincidence that they returned to FTTP once BDUK was done for them
Sogfast here no problem here so far!
Stats recorded: 28 Oct 2023 20:26:21
DSLAM type / SW version: BDCM:0xc190 (193.144) / v0xc190
Modem/router firmware: AnnexA version – A2pvfbH043q.d26u
DSL mode: G.fast
Status: Showtime
Uptime: 8 days 9 hours 1 min 41 sec
Resyncs: 0 (since 20 Oct 2023 11:26:00)
Downstream Upstream
Line attenuation (dB): 37.9 0.0
Signal attenuation (dB): 37.9 0.0
Attainable speed (kbps): 223795 38088
Connection speed (kbps): 159921 30000
SNR margin (dB): 9.4 6.4
Power (dBm): 0.0 4.1
Interleave depth: 0 0
INP: 552.00 535.00
G.INP: Not enabled Not enabled
Vectoring status: Unknown Unknown
RSCorr/RS (%): 0.0357 0.0007
RSUnCorr/RS (%): 0.0000 0.0000
ES/hour: 0 0
Bearer 0
INP: 552.00 535.00
INPRein: 0.00 0.00
delay: 0 0
PER: 0.00 1308.76
OR: 437.48 203.42
AgR: 16975.34 16353.99
Since Link time = 8 days 9 hours 1 min 41 sec
FEC: 195709 21199
CRC: 0 0
ES: 0 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Retr: 0 0
HostInitRetr: 0 0
FastRetr: 0 0
FailedRetr: 0 0
FailedFastRetr: 0 0
@Max from Cuckoo Oak Exchange – You do like flashing your stats fella.
@Sydney Ross, LOL, That is one thing he can not do with FTTP, not really much stats to flash around well none that we can get hold of. I expect there is a way to get some data from the ONT, but they are locked.
Looking at my router there is nothing, it just says connected, some IP adre4s4ess, DNS and gateway addresses and how long it has been connected.
so far 10 Days 18 Hours 59 Minutes at the time of copying and pasting. so it seems to have stayed online longer than it has since I went to FTTP. So hopefully Zzoomm have sorted out their problems.
Sky will stop selling G.FAST by end of Q1 2024. There’s no logical reason for it from what I hear internally but it will happen as part of a project to bring CGNAT.
Sky and CGNAT??????????
Oh, CGNAT er, that will make some people unhappy. I am glad I did not go to now TV after if they are doing that, saying that, not sure how much it would really affect me.
Isn’t the rapid demise of G.Fast just inevitable.
Making sure that the customer has a suitable router, filter and engineering tasks along with the continued DSL pricing may make the G.Fast product expensive in comparison and they will not want to pay again for a FTTP conversion if soon.
Hence why they may be withdrawing G.Fast from the FTTP planned areas whether OR or other as typical G.Fast seeking customers are more likely to move to the first FTTP made available.
Broadband for rural Kent offers Gfast ultrafast broadband using Openreach SOGFAST. https://b4rk.co.uk/gfast
@Tim
These come with 24-month contract with free installation plus The monthly service price is subject to annual price increases from the 1st of April each year by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate of inflation published in January each year plus 3.9%.
Cannot get any fiber at my post code or date for same.
I live within the Greater Manchester border. What is going on, are we the forgotten race.
SOGFast here. With Cerberus Networks, who still offer the service.
Before it was switched to SOGFast, it was Gfast for three years and never had any problems. Service runs consistently at 280+ Mbps, no drop-outs, no issues at all. I have a ZyXEL router connected directly to the master socket rather than using the Openreach modem too. I guess that may have helped…
I agree that ZyXEL router are very good for Gfast.
Broadband Checker says that they’ve pulled G.Fast from my cabinet (Entry says Not available, though it was in the past) and are offering FTTP on Demand at near the same speed 330 down 50 up. Despite having a cabinet 60 foot away from the house, G. Fast and FTTP on demand no good to me as the cabinet I’m connected to is at the other end of the road 300 yards away. Given that Virgin co-ax was laid in by Telewest (Later Virgin) in the 1990s, I should think we’ll be lucky to see OR/BT FTTP, in this part opf NW London before 2030, if at all. Though I note that CF have being doing some work half a mile away.
“Despite having a cabinet 60 foot away from the house, G. Fast and FTTP on demand no good to me as the cabinet I’m connected to is at the other end of the road 300 yards away.”
FTTP doesn’t use cabinets – it’s all underground or on poles, a completely separate network to the copper network. For many people, their FTTP connections are served from a different exchange to the local telephone exchange which provides their copper landline, so the FTTP line can go in a completely different direction.
“FTTP on demand” is a dead product, and in effect it just means you don’t have FTTP. (It means that in principle you could pay many thousands of pounds for Openreach to do a bespoke installation)
The slow progress in bringing the joys of FTTP to the country is probably explained by the OR PR image at the front of this article . . . . OR engineer, wearing only top-half waterproofs, replete with safety helmet, servicing a fibre cabinet with the door open . . . in the rain . . . no red-stripey tent to cover the proceedings . . ah well. there’s short-cutting and there’s short circuiting . . . . “Fare-well and adieu my fair Spanish ladies”
(Lights blue touch-paper)
Fastest build in Europe at the moment. For all their many flaws slow build speed isn’t one.
As far as your specific area goes perhaps they’ve read your comments on here and don’t feel like the hassle from having to open chambers, rod, rope and cable them let alone if they have to dig to unblock ducts or even stand poles.
It maybe wet, but not raining. But I wonder why he would be using an amplifier in a cabinet that hasn’t even been commissioned!! The fun of publicity photo’s
Fake propoganda ..? Must be being paid for by government sponsored lobbyists.
Surely they wouldn’t be putting fake imagary out – ASA, HSE, OfCom anyone?
Yeah we are also a G.fast prisoner, it’s been a nightmare. Just renewed my Sky contract, no one else would quote as address checker now says unavailable (despite already being on the product), so I’m stuck with their commercial terms for the life of the product now. Spoke to OR who said we’ll try to fix it but ultimately haven’t and even if they did, I guess there’s not many ISPs to switch to now.
We have FTTP all around us, our street is quite small and sits right by the cabinet with the G.fast pod, the distance to next road means Gfast would only be available to our street.
OR did build FTTP to the top half of the street (with a different postcode that CityFibre can partially serve), but left us behind. Had email updates saying it’s planned to be built, then cancelled at least twice.
CityFibre can’t get a wayleave for our road and the G.fast pod can only serve us, so feels like they’ve done it on purpose to maximise ROI on G.fast knowing it’s best speed for us – instead choosing to chase CityFibre’s deployment round town, rather than take the monopoly.
Last time I did an OR enquiry it got passed to second line as it didn’t make sense to them why we hadn’t been included. The outcome was basically “your copper distribution point isn’t currently in our build plans”; and the basis of the response was we don’t do it by postcode, we do it by distribution points so tough until we decide you can have it.
I’ll be honest I struggle to have too much sympathy in this case given there are still quite a few parts of the country that don’t have access to even the base FTTC speeds and still rely on ADSL2+. We aren’t even talking rural areas here, the flat I recently moved out of in central Bristol couldn’t get anything better than 11Mbps over ADSL2+.
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G.fast is a far better product than VDSL2 & ADSL2+ and more reliable and faster as an interim technology until FTTP becomes available at the 40% of premises that don’t have it!
Gfast is very reliable than FTTC for crosstalk.
Stats recorded 25 Jan 2024 01:28:01
DSLAM type / SW version: BDCM:0xc190 (193.144) / v0xc190
Modem/router firmware: AnnexA version – A2pvfbH043q.d26u
DSL mode: G
Status: Showtime
Uptime: 15 days 0 hour 1 min 37 sec
Resyncs: 0
Downstream Upstream
Line attenuation (dB): 36.9 0.0
Signal attenuation (dB): 36.9 0.0
Connection speed (kbps): 244167 42115
SNR margin (dB): 3.1 3.1
Power (dBm): 0.0 4.1
Interleave depth:
INP: 551.00 535.00
Am I the only one on G.Fast with a rock solid 300/50 connection ?