UK regulator Ofcom has finally cottoned on the fact that most fiber broadband lines – the ones within reach of 96% of the UK population – aren’t really fiber at all. What you’re likely getting is fiber-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) lines, instead of fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) lines you might have assumed you were getting.
As pedants such as me have been pointing out for well over a decade now, the final leg of those FTTC connections run over speed-sapping copper cable. Nevertheless, providers have sold FTTC lines as fiber connections since the technology first emerged. Although we knew it wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we’ve long referred to FTTC as fiber lines, because it became an industry shorthand.
Well over a decade since BT started rolling out FTTC connections, Ofcom has decided the term “fiber” is misleading. It’s running a consultation – regulator terminology for “don’t expect us to do anything in a hurry” – in which it’s suggesting a ban on the word fiber when describing FTTC lines. Providers “should only use the terms fiber and ‘full-fiber’ when referring to FTTP networks”, Ofcom suggests. FTTC should be referred to as ‘part-fiber’.
If Ofcom had come up with this proposal a decade or so ago, when these connections were first being flogged to the public, it would have made perfect sense. But as Ofcom itself concedes, the industry has already devised a means of discriminating between FTTC and FTTP. FTTC is routinely described as fiber, whereas FTTP is commonly called full-fiber. It’s not perfect, and I can well believe Ofcom’s claim many consumers don’t understand the distinction but does shifting to ‘part-fiber’ and ‘fiber’ make that any clearer? I’m not convinced. Not least because millions of people on fiber connections are suddenly going to find themselves on a part-fiber tariff and wonder what the hell happened.
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The other reason why this resembles Ofcom shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic is because FTTC’s days are numbered. As Ofcom’s own consultation states, FTTP is rocketing. By 2025, 84% of all properties will have access to a full-fiber network. Within a couple of short years, FTTP will be a dwindling minority. In areas that already have FTTP, you often can’t even order a FTTC line. Nobody wants to sell copper anymore if they can avoid it.
I recently wrote an exhaustive set of broadband provider reviews and I was genuinely impressed at the level of honesty at the point of sale. For reference, I haven’t been genuinely impressed since about 1983. Many of the broadband providers were using headline speeds that were level or even below their reported average in the Ofcom broadband speed research. Some didn’t even show speeds until you’d entered your full postcode, and they could offer a personalized estimate of what you’d achieve.
When it came to differentiating between packages, yes there was plenty of ‘fiber’ and ‘full-fiber’ in the tariff names. But beneath that, you could quite clearly see the difference in speeds – both down and up – that you were expected to receive. Customers may well be confused about the technology, but I struggle to believe most people are in the dark about what speeds they are buying.
If Ofcom really wants to clear up confusion for consumers, it could do a better job of explaining why so much speed is sucked out by Wi-Fi. One of the most common complaints that broadband providers deal with is people ordering a new connection, firing up an internet speed test on their phone, and then feeling robbed when said speed test reports they’re only getting a quarter of the speed they paid for. Cue furious customers ranting at call-centre staff, because they refuse to believe that running a speed test from a three-year-old phone while standing two thick walls away from their router should result in a dramatic drop-off in throughput.
At the risk of sounding like a shill for big broadband, the industry’s largely behaving itself – giving consumers a fair and honest reflection of the speeds they’re likely to receive at the point of ordering online. Twiddling with the fiber terminology isn’t going to help anyone, that boat’s already sailed. Someone should wake Ofcom up when they start selling 6G mobile broadband. Then we’ve got a ball game.
