ADSL: broadband over the old phone line
ADSL travels entirely on copper pairs from the exchange. Speed falls sharply with distance; rural lines may struggle to reach double-digit Mbps. It is vulnerable to electrical interference and wet weather faults. Most UK homes have moved on where alternatives exist, but pockets of ADSL remain.
FTTC: fibre to the cabinet (part fibre)
Openreach VDSL2 sends fibre to the green street cabinet, then copper to your home. That is why it is labelled “part fibre”. Downloads can reach around 80 Mbps on short loops, but uploads are modest and speeds drop with line length. Copper is also the focus of the national PSTN switch-off: maintaining old voice copper is becoming uneconomic.
FTTP: fibre to the premises
FTTP brings optical fibre to your property, typically terminating on an ONT (optical network terminal) inside. BT, Sky and Vodafone use Openreach FTTP; Virgin Media uses its own coax in many areas but is rolling fibre too; alt-nets like CityFibre, Netomnia and others overbuild selected towns with dedicated ducts.
Latency is lower, speeds scale into the hundreds or thousands of Mbps, and weather-related copper faults largely disappear. Installations may require engineer visits to pull fibre through ducts.
Choosing between them
If FTTP is available at your postcode, it is usually the default recommendation for anyone who can afford it: better upload for working from home, resilience for smart security, and future-proofing against copper retirement. Where only FTTC exists, compare G.fast pockets (see our G.fast guide) or 5G home broadband from Three if indoor signal allows.
SwitcherMate highlights what is genuinely available to your address—not just what national banners claim.
How to verify what you are buying
Order confirmations and Key Information Documents should spell out the wholesale bearer. If you see references to copper path, NTE5C master sockets without an ONT, or “fibre” with a maximum upload of 20 Mbps, probe further—likely FTTC. Genuine FTTP orders mention an optical network terminal and optical loss readings after install.
If sales agents cannot answer, use Openreach’s address checker and your ISP’s own availability tool, then cross-check with an independent comparison. SwitcherMate is designed to reduce mismatch between what is marketed nationally and what is truly orderable on your drop.