Ultrafast broadband deals seem to be the new frontier for internet. Long gone are the slow, shrill days of dial-up, with our technological needs now demanding rapid download speeds, which ISPs are falling over each other to deliver.
So how fast is Ultrafast? It can achieve a download speed of anywhere between 100Mb per second and a dizzying 1Gb (1000 Mb). It’s quite a leap from Superfast’s upper range of 67Mb with an FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) setup, where fibre cables run as far as the street cabinet but not on to the home.
Just under 10% of UK homes are currently able to enjoy Ultrafast broadband deals, but this should rise to 34% by 2025 thanks to Openreach’s G.fast technology and the ongoing upgrade of copper cable connections with Full Fibre.
As homes become internet-intensive hubs for smart-devices, virtual assistants and other networked gadgets, Ultrafast promises an uninterrupted, effortless online experience. Even for large households simultaneously streaming 4K movies and gaming, an Ultrafast will erase any bitter memories of buffering.
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Who offers Ultrafast broadband deals?
With Openreach slowly rolling out FTTP infrastructure and aiming to reach fifteen million homes by 2025, increasing numbers of ISPs are jumping on the Ultrafast broadband bandwagon.
If you’re looking to upgrade your online life and make day-long downloads a thing of the past, you’ll want to explore the Ultrafast broadband packages currently available. Not only are national companies like Sky, Vodafone, Virgin and BT on board, but more localised operations like Hyperoptic are also jumping on the Ultrafast broadband deals band-wagon.
Ultrafast broadband from BT:
Ultrafast broadband from Virgin:
Virgin isn’t part of Openreach and use their own coaxial cables instead of the existing copper ones, meaning they’re already able to deliver ultrafast speeds. They have three broadband plans available:
Ultrafast broadband from Vodafone:
Despite terming their products “gigafast”, only their 900 Mb option is close to delivering download speeds of 1 Gb (1000 Mb) per second. Regardless of the misleading marketing, Vodafone offer some of the quickest and best value broadband around:
Ultrafast broadband from Sky:
Ultrafast broadband from Hyperoptic:
Its speeds are some of the best commercially available, ranging from Ultrafast to Hyperfast and peaking at Gigabit broadband levels. Its price plans are also dreamily low.
The downside? Hyperoptic isn’t a nationwide operation – yet – and only serves large blocks of flats and business units in localised areas. It’s currently available in parts of 39 UK towns and cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester.
What is Ultrafast broadband and how does it work?
Where an ADSL connection consists of copper cables, which struggle to transfer data over long distances, and FTTC or fibre broadband use superior fibre optic cable – but only from the telephone exchange to the street cabinet – Ultrafast improves download and upload speeds by implementing G.fast and FTTP technology.
FTTP or ‘Fibre to the Premises’ entirely replaces copper cables with fibre optic ones, which can transfer data close to the speed of light with barely any signal interference.
These run from the telephone exchange to the street cabinet and directly on to the home, resulting in much better connectivity than you’d otherwise experience. Alternatively, Opensource’s G.fast technology utilises a special pod that helps boost the signal of the remaining length of copper cable, making it work as efficiently as a fibre optic one.
Although Ultrafast Broadband is marketed differently from ISP to ISP – often interchangeable with terms like Full Fibre, FTTP, Superfast and Gigafast (the latter somewhat misleadingly) – its defining feature is a download speed in excess of 100 Mb a second.
It’s great for anyone who wants to avoid lag and the peril of ‘ping’ in live-gaming scenarios, as well as for lovers of 4K movies, which require about eight-times more data than Standard Definition films. Also, if you think of yourself as king or queen of the live-stream, you’ll benefit from an Ultrafast fibre broadband deal with its superior upload speeds.
What is Gigabit broadband?
The very best Ultrafast broadband plan demonstrates the potential of Full Fibre or FTTP to reach and exceed 1 Gb per second. Hyperoptic has its Hyperfast option – essentially being Gigabit broadband – and there are numerous other companies providing ever-incredible speeds to very localised areas.
TalkTalk has its UFO plan, a futuristic acronym for Ultra Fibre Optic, but presently limited to areas of York, while KC Communications and Gigler serve rural communities often held back by poor infrastructure and connectivity.
BT has recently announced that it will be launching Gigabit pacages very soon, with a date sometime in April. According to BT, it will be 25x faster than its Superfast Fibre package with speeds averaging 50Mb.
Gigabit broadband will allow large files to be downloaded in seconds and be a boon for small and medium-sized businesses. But, with whispers of even-quicker, terabyte-level speeds increasingly audible, ISPs might want to withhold a few choice synonyms for “really really really fast” for the time being.
