Britain's fibre broadband boom

A glut of full-fibre providers is making it stupidly cheap to get ultrafast internet connections. But will Britain's broadband boom last? Barry Collins investigates

- Barry Collins

Symmetrical gigabit broadband for £25 per month? We often warn you of deals that are too good to be true in PC Pro, but I have just signed up for such a deal with one of the 100+ full-fibre providers that are springing up all over Britain.

From the Highlands of Scotland to the villages of Cornwall, Britain is in the midst of a full-fibre frenzy, with dozens of smaller providers -socalled altnets - running fibre to consumers' doors. It's a massive land grab and, with companies keen to please investors, they're offering stupidly fast broadband at stupidly cheap prices to attract customers.

But can it last? Will these cut-price fibre providers be able to compete with giants such as Openreach and Virgin Media over the long term? Or will the market go the same way as it did with ADSL, with smaller fish swallowed by the bigger sharks? Here's the story of the fibre boom and what it means for broadband Britain.

Triggering the explosion

When it comes to delivering end-to-end fibre connections, Britain had - until relatively recently - been lumbering along at a rather pedestrian rate. At the start of the 2010s, BT set an ambitious target to reach 25% of UK households with full fibre, but that quickly faltered. Openreach largely concentrated on delivering the much slower and cheaper fibre-to-the-cabinet and full fibre remained a rarity.

But in recent years, something changed. Though Boris Johnson's bluster about delivering ultrafast broadband to all was typically exaggerated, there has been a surge in Britain's full-fibre rollout and experts give credit to the government and regulator Ofcom for giving it a shove.

"The number of alternative full-fibre networks in the market has rocketed to over a hundred in just the past three to four years, and this stems from the combined impact of several changes," said Mark Jackson of ISPreview (ispreview.co.uk), a site dedicated to the broadband industry.