Superfast broadband - this fibre business and why it pays to do some research

The old copper telephone wires looped out from central exchanges. The further you lived from the exchange, the greater the signal loss and the slower your service connection became - so making using the internet clunky and slow.

Cambridgeshire county council and BT have been putting in Fibre broadband to replace copper telephone wires with a network of fibre optic cable. Tthey act like mirrors, enabling digital data to be pulsed along them using infrared laser light. While broadband speeds tail off as copper wire connections get longer, it doesn't matter how long a fibre optic cable is. There's no signal interference and little or no performance hit to endure. So a fibre based package makes sure people can take advantage of this upgrade.

Now - the fibre runs to the junction box - this is called fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and then from the junction box to your house it runs on the old copper. If you have a junction box outside your house - well done!

For a really high user of broadband - like a buisness working from home such as an architect or a music company where you need to download a lot of data then FTTP or (fibre to the premises ) might be worth looking into but this isnt cheap. 

But to access FTTC you still need to contact your service provider and ask them about a fibre based package. For most people the important thing is to do some research. A bit like the banks or the energy suppliers, it pays to shop around and not stick with one supplier year in and year out.  

Moneysupermarket.com would be a good start.