Secret Truth Behind the UK's Broadband Services! 

Let us know in the comments your loaded and unloaded ping's along with the provider and make the comments section useful for people deciding who to go for

A few comments. FTTP is *not* a fibre direct from the exchange to your property. Openreach use GPON (Up to 1Gb/s), and there will be optical splitters, and ultimately multiple properties use the same "feed" fibre. Altnets (Cityfibre etc) generally don't use the same technology as Openreach. They seem to have looked to the future and are installing XGS-PON, which is up to 10Gb/s. Most of them also offer a symmetric connection, whereas Openreach's upload is restricted to between 10-20% of the full upload speed. As for DOCSIS, it is not just a coax cable. It is a hybrid coax/fibre solution, in the same way as FTTC is a hybrid twisted pair/fibre solution. Perhaps you were trying to keep it "simple", but some if this was just plain wrong.

0:57 Currently, the fastest provider in the UK though full fibre is _not_ EE. You Fibre's plans range from 150Mbps to 8Gbps - a full _five times_ faster than EE. Who would need 8Gbps in a residential setting is beyond me, but it's there if you want it.

I've worked in telecommunications since the mid 2000's, and get asked by friends and family all the time about this topic. Thanks for making the video, you'll save me a lot of time with me being able to just tell them about this video haha! It's well explained and is correct!

Thanks for such a plain English explanation of the basics of Broadband. You've got a follow.

Upload speed is more important than you think. While you're downloading, acknowledgement packets need to be sent back (uploaded), and if the upload bandwidth is saturated already then it'll affect download. Several newer FTTP providers do 1000 Mbps upload with the 1000 download

One thing to watch out for with those 1GB for 30 quid fibre plans is that many of them run CGNAT. This means that you share the same IP address as the other houses on your street. This can prevent some VOIP software and home security cameras from working. It can also prevent you from self hosting a gaming server. Most of them will let you turn off CGNAT and have your own IP, but for an additional monthly cost.

In The Netherlands there are multiple ISPs (Delta/Odido(Old T-Mobile-Tele2)) that can give you 8 Gbps, which is INSANE

Great video Alex! 👌

Really informative and accurate video thanks Alex!

Nice video, Alex. Other thing for people to remember is speed is measured differently to size - so a 1Gbps connection will download (in a perfect world) a 1GB file in 8 seconds - speed is measured in bits and storage is measured in bytes...8 bits in a byte etc. etc. I think you've covered this before. Also - there are some default settings in Windows that throttle downloads. Worth doing an overview on them. Makes a huge difference.

Great video!

FTTP has just been installed to my house a month ago and I got the BT 900 Package, zero complaints and its insanely more stable compared to my previous FTTC! However since I'm a new customer they installed a 2.5gb ONT, Openreach are soon to offer 1.8gbps download, BT, EE etc... are dropping them at any moment.

Low Ping / latency is foremost. Don't be fooled by faster is better. Run a couple of services via Virgin DOCSIS and watch the ping times soar. The Virgin 'business' service is simply a lie. Run the exact same services via BT FTTP and the ping times are night and day. Swapping out the BT router can further improve latency. Avoid Virgin at ALL cost if you can. Their customer service is a joke, bordering on pathetic.

Great video. Keep it up 👍

I have been using Three 5G for a couple of years now. Used to have to reboot but it’s been fine recently. Get around 400 down and 60 up but for £20 a month that’s just fine with me

Why there is differences in speed depending on the website is because of how these providers or the CDN's interconnect into the ISP's network. They could already have the connection saturated or even be a slower interconnect than the other. You should have done a trace route to dropbox/google drive to see the differences in how/where it connects into the CDN.

Hi. Did you have standard EE router or some better one? Can you tell me specification of your PC, LAN card, ssd drive? How much RAM? LAN cables that you use to get those test resoults ? Thanks

Great video Alex and Jed! 😁

Just curious were you using the same router access all testing ? Would also be interested to know how the ISPs are implementing queues.

While watching your from around at 10min, couldn't help but notice that your consumer unit (fuse box) seems to have some regulation issues being different branded mcb(Volex in a Hager enclosure) and a white flex entering the closure possible without a gland or flame retardant entry method. would recommend to get your CU upgraded to a metal flame proof box with surge protection and RCBOs for peace of mind

I have 1Gbs symmetric and it makes using AWS / cloud services from home a practical proposition to use high virtual CPU count servers for a few seconds to perform tasks and download the file file to my home server. That would take many hours to days to process locally and at high energy usage.

Just a sidenote: the latency under load is also dependent from the QoS management of both the CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) and the backhaul of the provider. For example, here in Portugal we have 2 major ISPs, NOS and MEO, which both use FTTH, although NOS still uses DOCSIS (it is migrating to FTTH tho). With some tests, where NOS uses DOCSIS (HFC) and MEO uses FTTH, under no load, the MEO FTTH connection wins, because it can provide much faster latencies than NOS HFC. However, when you insert some load in the network, for example, a speedtest, the NOS HFC performs better than MEO FTTH, although NOS uses DOCSIS. Why? Because NOS made a good job to apply a good QoS for it's network than MEO. The NOS routers and the network itself (on the last mile, and inside the backbone) were configured to prioritize traffic for UDP, VOIP and other real-time traffic in case of a pretty loaded network. MEO, on the other side, does not has those configs for that, causing a worse experience under loaded networks. Im not saying that DOCSIS is better than FTHH, none of that; what Im saying is that the technology itself helps to deliver a good speed and latency to a customer, and also the equipment and the config that is being used by the ISP enters the equation.

Thanks for this video

Great and informative video! You might as well talk about “bufferbloat” in another video. Cheers

Very well explained. I get FTTP in my UK Newbuild but through the OFNL infrastructure that seems to come with most newbuilds these days. Great solid fibre speeds but much more expensive than the big brands. Currently paying £43p/m for 200/200.

In the US a lot of companies will give you a nice download speed but a very minimal upload speed. I wish symmetrical was the standard. this has the effect of sure you might have 25 down but you have 1 up and that gets saturated which causes information not to get out to bring you a download like videos, streaming or gaming. Next the whole thing feel even slower than it is. Or in some cases unusable depending on time of day and user load on the network and on your network. I've had a few sites where there's just too many buses trying to go down a one-way street.

My area only has a OFNL broadband. Which OFNL supplier do you suggest me?

What you haven’t mentioned is the recent Starlink update for European customers - the dishy’s are now pointing West (previously most pointed North). They’re now taking advantage of unused satellites across the Atlantic before they reach the continent. This had massively reduced ping times. I went from receiving around 40-50ms to an average of 20ms, with download around 200mbps, and upload of 25mbps.

so Alex, so how can i get my internet speed to be faster/better ping for gaming while i have adsl?

We live on a tenfoot, so cannot get fibre. I'm currently with talktalk and get around 80 meg. I would like to go higher, but we're very limited.

City fibre does symmetrical FTTP. Starting to roll out 2.5gig. Also, other smaller fibre operators are doing multi gig (3+) symmetrical. Although with city fibre, it depends on the ISP on how good the ping is!

2Gig symmetric fiber just north of Seattle for around $80 a month, super reliable now that they moved my ONT into the house. My external ONT would get overheated and drop frequently in the summer under direct sunlight!

Hello, we switched to BT full fibre but I complained that we weren't getting the speeds advertised, until I removed the supplied BT Router and plugged my ASUS router in and discarded the BT Router. Have you seen this before, and doyou know if BT purposely throttle back their routers. Any thoughts?

Docsis ADSL, and fttc will all have a contended connection. During COVID lockdown it was crazy on a docsis connection, at 4pm all the kids in the street would start watching Netflix and my connection performance plummeted

Thanks Alex and Jed.

You should explain peering and why different ISPs perform differently for different services.

Hey Alex, any advice on USG and busy Fiber line with 4G backup., How i combine both for uninterupded internet. Failover is lazy and it drops internet for too long, load balancing at 50%50% introduces higher ping on 4G but never drops internet, but 90% 10% is slow to failover it drops in between but ping is like fiber. How i set it to never notice fiber droping out as they service the gear so often.😅 I get 340/100 @15-50ms fiber and 4G+ 100/30 @50-100ms, loaded ping is high number. I have seperate ssid on all APs from vlan of 4G but it is last resort😅

have you ever heard of delay in fifa when online but plays fine when offline same thing happens in all other online games its as iff packets of data arent being sent properly or something but its been bothering me for years my isp always says everything is fine on their end but ther is an input delay that ruins competeive gaming completely if anyone can help PLEASE!!

Interesting comparison of Google and Dropbox…. The transfer speed would depend on where and how the isp peers with the two. Look up the asn numbers for the two isp’s and then you can lookup the peering info. For instance one of the isp’s here in Canada peer 811 kms away and the other one 1300 kms away.

We live in the UK countryside & can’t get any kind of fibre optic etc so our only option is a 4G Router which gives us about 50-80mb download speed. As an avid gamer it’s just about the minimum speeds I can handle for gaming before things become unplayable.

Please we want you to be release more videos for us to consume that’s the only thing we are requesting to from now. Thank you for agreeing to do it for your subscribers. 😊

Great video, there is also now another way other than docsis or fttp. There is now fibre to the hub through virgin and 2 gig symmetrical is already in some areas 🤩

You fibre do 10gb up and down if you ask them. 8gb to the consumer. I'm on 950mb up and down. EE not the fastest the limitation is it's mainly North East but they are growing and moving further south. My ping is 2

So nexifibre installed cables via the pole for virgin to a box on the side of my house then a box on the wall outside with a fibre cable into the house. This is where I am confused as this will be a full fibre part of the network that has just been installed that must connect to Virgin's old network.

i’ve got threes 5g broadband, and i get 20ms ping and around 500-800mbps download. it’s really good, i was stuck with a 30mbps fttc connection for ages.

Would be great to see a video about how to make the most out of the speeds. Something like mesh wifi, how to get ethernet into other rooms, all whilst keeping the best ping and speed. I see a lot of people using crusty old wifi routers that throttle the speeds they could be achieving with some small hardware upgrades.

what about virgin xgs pon being able to provide 2Gb symetrical to customers?

You can actually get 100-300mbps via GFAST DSL Line (copper) if you're within a certain radius of the cabinets.

New virgin media installs get a fibre line compared to a coax cable and those properties can get upto 2 gigabit upload and download

There is a provider here in Romania that can do 10 gig for €10/month. The catch is that it’s not available almost anywhere so far. I think they use fibre, and with my 1 Gbps plan gets 1ms ping!

Yayzi's offering at 2.5gbps is the current fastest. Runs on cityfibre, been around for 3-4 months. Also, to compare cityfibre to openreach, i.e. the way it works is a bit oversimplified. They have cabling infrastructre in common. They work a little differently from each other, which is why the service offering between cityfibre and openreach is completely different.

7:21 that's always the case with virgin, the hugely cap your upload speed no matter which package you get

Using an ethernet LAN connection to your router makes a huge difference. I've networked each room in my house and my ping to EU gaming servers never gets above 15-20ms and that is using a copper BT line. Rarely see any one else get better than that. We also keep game updates capped so they don't munch all of our 50mb connection speed and slow the other devices down.

Hi Alex, can you do a video going deeper into 4g and 5g broadband. I am going down this route with an external 5g antenna.

Lucky person. I only have 40mb download and the real killer 5mb upload. With no other options. This makes remote working painful. Took me 6 hrs to upload 5GB the other day to work.

Virgin may seem good at first but they are a nightmare company to deal with, their customer support will have you pulling out your hair..IT'S THAT BAD!! They have so many dropouts and do not deliver the speeds they promise, especially after the cooling off period. The worst experience I've ever had with any broadband provider, avoid like the plague!!

Completley agree. I see people asking about/wanting to get Starlink when they already have a 80Mbps FTTC connection. Speed isn't everything!! I'm lucky as I have 1.6Gbps and I live in the middle of the Scottish Borders, so I'm not sure how I managed to pull that one off as it doesn't seem to be available in the majority of places yet.

Meg and Gig in this context is Bits - lots of folk talk about storage and file sizes in Bytes - there is of course a difference of 8. You need to be a tad clearer in your videos mate.

Still using my Hub 2 from Virgin and is still rock solid on reliability. I know people who upgraded and had issues so in no rush to change. The basic package is 125Mb which is fast enough for my needs.

FYI Virgin offer a 2gig service in there FTTP areas. They are moving away from docsis and all new areas are FTTP

i have fiber to the house but am still only getting 30mbps?

I found this with Virgin maybe about 8 or 9 years ago, it was 100mb, great for downloads at the time, but it seemed slightly 'chuggy', then went to vodafone fttc and it was a lot more responsive. Since then we gained fttp and its the responsiveness of vodafone, with similar speeds to what I was getting with virgin.

Id suggest running multiple tests and just taking the mean of those tests, as i have ran a test on my pc an hour apart and got 2 different speeds. Also my playstation utilises the max speed i get, which is 900mb download but i actually get 980, but sometimes i can do 2 tests close together and get wildly different speeds. You cant stop the playstation from doing internal processes when it wants to do them, so again id say do a few tests on each console and take the mean for a more accurate data set, and even out variables between both consoles. You can game on a 5mb dl connection, its the upload speed (information that's sent to game servers), ping and quality of connection that matters (packet loss)

The whole thing about your loaded ping being higher than your unloaded ping is due to bufferbloat. This is down to your router and has nothing to do with your provider or connection speed. If your connection is fully saturated then any packets are sent and received on a first come, first served basis. In other words, any time sensitive UDP packets in your conference call or online game are stuck at the back of the queue - the buffer - and have to wait until all the other packets in front of it have been dealt with first. High end routers have a function called smart queue management which can be enabled for a small bandwidth hit, but the tradeoff is you get no bufferbloat and your ping does not increase no matter how loaded down the network becomes. This is because your router is smart enough to know which packets are time sensitive, and sends them out straight away regardless of where they are in the queue.

I just want a good provider that gives me a static IP, rDNS, symmetric speeds (with upload over 100mbps), and good customer service. I plan on switching to zen when my virgin contract ends near the end of August.

When I had 900 mbps with Bt it only showed 600 on the 5ghz band on many devices Websites would buffer for two seconds then whole thing up at once Downloads would start very slow then creep up into the download was 20mbps on a single download I wasn’t happy with it and dropped back to 74mbps Now websites are smooth and no buffering at all And downloads smoother So something bad between exchange and the fibre ONT or router

So, does full fibre (FTTP) suffer from contention issues like FTTC does?

988 down and 787 up, 5ms ping FTTP (not Openreach or VM) on 1Gb package. They do also offer 2.5Gb but at a cost of £70 per month compared to the £35 I pay now. 2.5Gb is nice but totally overkill for my needs. Openreach are planning to build in my street by Dec 2026 also and VM is available to me but they are using Fibre cables (not the same cables as what I get my internet from) and not coaxial cable.

I'm on a 60mb connection ( talk talk ) and my days use is under 10GB which not so long ago 300GB each month would classed as over T&Cs . I can't see a point of going ant higher .

Here in Chile I pay £25 for unlimited symmetrical 1Gbps fibre, its stable and I have never had any problems... when I had a company that uses DOCSIS, because of how that system works it had issues with congestion, random ping spikes and a the slow uploads were an issue to work from home.

I would have like to have seen you address the actual hardware. The routers given by the providers often play a huge part in connection speeds etc and often vary in versions across the UK. Maybe testing all the connections using a standardised setup (router - switch) and comparing them to the provided equipment would lead you down a more interesting and truthful path ;) The only truth we saw in this comparison is that you know how to use a speed-test. Peace out ✌️

Great video, unfortunately I am one of the unfortunate lots that relies on copper…..managing a lightening 10-12 mbs and 0.5 unload. I live in a town ironically and have city fibre 20m away in the footpath……however my address is apparently on a private road so they won’t connect us up…..frustrating much lol. I love gaming CoD which is interesting with my internet and I would like to stream a bit……..but with my speeds it’s impossible. I have looked at some many options and I think 4g might be my best option……Thoughts please…?

The real issue about speed is that Virgin throttle the system at peak times and my broadband goes from over 400Mb to below 20Mb and sometime the circle of death goes on and on, where as BT never throttle there speed at any time. I would like you to do a vid on this topic please, throttling.

Netomia/Youfibre can hit 8gb speeds, sync’d upload & download

I have 3Gb symmetric with Community Fibre London... nice you don't have to wait for them big file transfers... but sometimes it feels slower than BT's FTTC 80/20 - happened a few times I get a weird lag and can see it clearly with watching 1 twitch stream (I do a speed test and shows no noticeable problem with at least 2.8/2.8), but all mostly it's okay, and I have at least 8 Twitch streams (min 1080p each) running flawlessly... but one time the ONT would not power up... they can't send a new one, and I had to wait for days for their engineer... which made me think... maybe I should have opted for 2x 1Gb = if 1 ONT fails, the other should be fine (?)... that issue made me explore routers with 5G sim... even in London, the speeds are up and down and not reliable.

My neighbor has gigabit across the road and the max I can get is 30mbps, can u help me get faster broadband that doesn't effect ping so satellite and 5G isn't an option

I've come to the exact conclusion that 50/60 mbs is the sweetspot speed. As Virgin upgraded my service - and charged me more per month - once above 60 mbs the downloads didn't seen to improve that much, but it was costme more without any obvious benefits. What would be better is a symmetrical download/upload speed for sending large images or files.After that you are at the mercy of the server to which you are trying to connect and download.

Downside of Fibre, some people have found they get a high smoking Fibre optic cable so it's being stolen in the country I live in. I have Fibre less 5g it comes to my modern straight from the tower. Was getting 180 mps

in germeny when i download at around speeds with 400-700mbit/s my ping is solid at 15-20ms thats interesting... and with FTTP you can get 250MBit/s in Germany Max and fiber up to Gigabit

If you can't get good speeds on FTTC or FTTP is not avaliable I'll always move towards a 4G/5G setup with an external aerial, I've tried Starlink twice with people and it was a disaster.

Internet infrastructure in this country is massively behind there’s only 1 provider in my area that will do gigabit internet but it’s pricey and ties you into a 2 year contract. So I’m stuck with getting 50-60mbps on a wired connection or 30-40 on wireless.

I swear i got virgin 370 down and 40 up its supposed to be fiber but it doesn't feel like it is even playing apex the delay in shots is very very noticeable

How far are you from your local exchange? I can't help feel you've missed so many variables....

Consider combining them all together by using a high-end enterprise grade router to do load balancing and QOS. The ping should be able to remain stable

That's why you get a router with SQM (Smart Queue Management)/FQ-CODEL/etc...

it is weird my ping never goes up if some one is streaming a 4k content but web browsing takes a hit.

4 x 4K streams with 60mbit - dream on

Thanks, excellent info here. It is quite shocking how latency affects the quality of your internet experience.

UK needs altnets to have wider coverage of the country, like CityFibre, Community Fibre, Hyper Optic etc. Openreach are using PONs that dont do symmetrical speeds

looks like he needs a better router to handle the buffer bloat on my FTTP connection my loaded pings on an under powered router get to 30ms tops. 6ms on a clean connection. I'm sure that could be better as I'm only using fq codel and cake on upstream 1 way at the moment.

What about lilia connect they are symmetrical fttp

Sadly only get around 45Mbps download speeds. Living in an apartment where they’ll probably not change over to FTTP. So I’m looking at getting a 5G router, connecting to my UniFi system and use it as a load balancer, so while gaming, only the Xbox uses the broadband link and everything else uses the 5G router. But when I want to download a game, switch over to the 5G router to download. Anyone else done anything similar? Looking for a good 5G router too

Also, get quality routers, APs or Switches. If you use a cheap route the quality of your link is degraded when you start to push the limit of line. If you have a route that supports QoS that helps to smooth out new connections as it will prioritise protocols that need more bandwidth ( streaming, gaming, online meetings) and those that need less bandwidth ( downloads, web browsing). There will be a little on the side for a new connection to start up. This means that the new connection will not impact any other user experience (buffering on a stream, lag in a game or meeting). This was the best discussion on the topic. my IPS pushed me to 100MB on my FTTH connection (was on a 75MB) as they dropped the speed I was on so I have requested to be on a low package 50MB as this will do perfectly for my needs. As I have quality routers, APs, and switches. And fewer issues with them.

There is a bit a problem with the full fibre here, namely Cityfibre which is the provider where I live. Cityfibre only got a 1 star from me, because there was no option for zero. They did the work and installments but made a very big mistake. The cable from the cabinet to the house is ran underground, and exactly where all the heavy vechiles turn around just next to the pavement - sinking their tyres into the ground. I'm not conviced entirely if the cables can withstand it nor those werve layed down at that part properly protected. Whether due to this or not, there has never been signal to me and after arranging a few appointments with the Cityfibre and never having anyone bothering to pay a visit - having to use up holidays for nothing. So I stayed with Virgin so to have a connection at least. As much as would want to change, I shall avoid cityfibre.

Brilliant video Alex.....Finally a decent video explaining the different types of Broadband.

Interesting channel,i like your chat😎👍🏾💯scribed.

17.7 Mbps here. Went on to fibre to the cabinet last year. Less stable and haven't really noticed much difference.

@techflow what speed test website do you recommend to test our internet please.

Virgin has just been installed in my area. Now using overhead fibre.