FullFibre Ltd Launch 2.3Gbps Broadband Plans on its UK ISP Network
Network operator FullFibre Limited (Fibre Heroes), which has already extended their open access Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGSPON) broadband network to cover 380,000 UK premises (up from 339k in May 2024), have today made a faster 2.3Gbps (symmetric speed) tier available to their partner ISPs for consumers and businesses to take.
The underlying full fibre network typically covers 170 towns across parts of Derbyshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire in England.
The operator’s growing network is also supported by a number of retail ISPs, such as BeFibre, Link Broadband, iDNET, Squirrel Internet, Octaplus, Fusion Fibre, TalkTalk, Direct Save Telecom Home Telecom and more. But until now the fastest packages that those providers could sell went up to a maximum speed of 1Gbps (1000Mbps).
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However, over the past few months we’ve seen a number of network operators launch 2Gbps or faster tiers, which have today been joined by a new 2.3Gbps tier from FullFibre. This is now available to the “majority of FullFibre’s existing 380,000+ premises” footprint, with plans to enhance additional GPON areas “soon“.
Matt Baker, Head of Wholesale at FullFibre, told ISPreview:
“With FullFibre largely building in areas traditionally served by older infrastructure, the introduction of our 2.3Gb symmetric service offers an exciting new option for both businesses and consumers. This new level of performance is designed to meet the growing demands for high-speed, reliable broadband connectivity, enabling businesses to run critical services more effectively and efficiently.”
At the time of writing there don’t appear to be any live retail packages available at this speed on their network, although that will no doubt change. Looking ahead, the network operator said they’re “on track” to reach 400,000 premises Ready For Service (RFS) in the “second half of this year“.
In addition, today’s announcement also reveals that Cumbria-based wholesale (aggregator) connectivity provider IP River have also joined their network.
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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That’s nice Fibre Heroes, but…
How about actually starting the build in Bewdley, it’s been more than 2 years now, since it was announced:
https://www.facebook.com/FibreHeroes/posts/333173975502948/https://www.facebook.com/FibreHeroes/posts/333173975502948/
Virgin / Nexfibre has beaten them to it.
Corrected link:
https://www.facebook.com/FibreHeroes/posts/333173975502948/
They (FullFibre) started doing work in my area in 2022, put the kit on my pole in July 2023 and finally knocked on my door in August 2024 to say I could order. Nexfibre started work in around September 2023, pole complete in November 2023 and I had it installed at my house in December 2023. If you can get fibre with another provider then I wouldn’t wait for FullFibre/Fibre Heroes to come along
This company is supposedly coming to the town, in 2024, well no sign yet, though four months to go.
Not sure if this fibre company is subbing for the other one mentioned in the article.
Meanwhile a well known 5G provider came a knocking say there was no fttp in the town, well seeing as the town is now festooned with boxes & tails on poles and more toby boxes have appeared, it was a surprising comment.
As an aside, do the fttp distribution cabinets need mains power, and if so, are they battery backed up?
On the power, not usually, no. That’s precisely why providers like XGS-PON and before that, GPON. The “P” in stands for passive.
while the P is indeed passive, that doesn’t mean in practice it works that way.
Openreach, with a handful of exceptions, puts the active equipment in the exchange and in the home. There are no powered electronics in the street. Any existing VDSL equipment is not part of this and will eventually be depowered and removed.
Some altnets have taken the cheap and nasty route by putting their kit in street cabinets, often much larger than those Openreach use for VDSL.
Aside from the space and noise issues, these can’t have as much power resiliency as an exchange can. This is probably why the recent ISPReview story about power resilience had comments from alt-net lobby groups complaining about the potential costs of doing so.
Don’t really understand talktalk and home telecom as it’s page has talktalk branding all over it so does this mean talktalk is selling 2 services.
Can’t wait to see the pricing from befibre on this
Perhaps I missing something but 380k prems across 110 towns, and a very slow build rate, doesn’t sound very sensible. Any operator needs volume in an area to make opex costs work.
I was wondering when they were going to announce this noticed the other day a 2300mbps speed profile appear in the response data for their checker api where it lists all the speed profiles avalivle at a given address.
Like you say none of the retail ISPs have launched a 2.3Gbps package yet.
What api are you using?
You can just go to their website and open up F12 dev tools go to network tab then enter a postcode and the address will appear in the response for the checker api expanding an address will show a sub section address details when expanded will be one called services available where if RFS will list all the speed profiles.
Yayzi Broadband the leaders in multigig over CityFibre will be offering these packages over FullFibre, we can take orders direct and will be linking up API in September. The prices will be the same as we offer over CityFibre.
Heard good things about yayzi so might make the switch when my befibre is up. Do yayzi use cgnat?
Spoke to Squirrel Internet about this and they arent advertising it yet but can offer it, however it £80pm!!!
2.3 Gbps is a niche product. I’m the technical director @ Squirrel and I don’t have a single device in my home that is capable of receiving 2.3 Gbps of throughput. This is a product for the 0.2% of residential customers who understand what they are buying and have equipment to access such speeds. This is such a fast product if has very little real world use cases for most customers! It’s a fantastic product but it’s not for most customers yet! This is the honest information we provide our customers with @ Squirrel rather than marketing. **********