With the rise of Smart TVs connected to the internet, TV usage is changing – no need to buy into long-term expensive packages to see films, sports and more. New providers like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Now TV allow you to pay as you go monthly at a much lower cost. And there’s also YouTube which is free but also has movies.
With phones, you may choose just to use your mobile but if you want a landline, there’s another solution -a VOIP – Voice Over Internet Protocol Phone which means you won’t need the connection to the BT socket any more and yes, you can take your old phone number with you. However you must set up your new contract with UpFibre before you cancel your BT line.
Once the wayleave or access agreement is in place with the freeholder, we can the proceed to placing an order for wholesale fibre broadband. This takes the largest amount of time – 45 days. It’s the same across all the wholesale providers. However it’s worth the wait because wholesale broadband of which there is excess capacity, will always be cheaper than a provider that intends to own all of the infrastructure all the way to the exchange. After 45 days, we can install equipment and do the cabling. For a small building, perhaps 50 premises, this shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. For a large building, perhaps of 300 premises, it might take 3 weeks. That constitutes the first fix. If and when end customers in flats/homes or business premises decide to purchase the service, we need to come back and do the second fix – this is where we bring the actual fibre inside the home/business and get you connected with a router to the internet. This might take up to a few hours, probably less.
Approx 97% of the country is connected to the internet via copper cable or coaxial cable. This means that there are physical limits to your download speed for movies or using cloud-based services and particularly limited with upload speed – essential for video conferencing/security cameras. Last year the reported average download speed across the UK was 46.2 Mbps and a paltry 6.2 Mbps for upload. UpFibre will connect you with fibre optic cable and our minimum download speed will be 100 Mbps and minimum upload speed – 100 Mbps. Our top package will offer 900 in both directions – that’s at least 19 times faster than the typical UK average for download and 145 times faster for upload speed. That’s why UpFibre can transform your connectivity.
A lot of the copper-based legacy providers offer headline-grabbing download speeds up to 300 Mbits per second but play down the download speed which is usually a tenth or less of that. The standard BT Superfast Fibre 1 with a download speed of 50 Mbps but the download speed is according to Ofcom, a mere 8 Mbps.
That easily gets eaten up on a shared connection for video cameras, voice conferencing, TV streaming and videochat.
What makes UpFibre different is that we are offering symmetrical upload speeds of 100, 350 and 900 Mbps – meaning you can expect smooth, reliable video, whatever you are using it for.
UpFibre aims to bring full fibre – all the way into your home or business. This means that you will have the fastest upload and download speeds. Many other providers claim to offer “Fibre broadband” when they are actually only offering a fibre optic cable that runs only to your local cabinet in the street and on copper thereafter.
TV watching patterns and by extension, subscriptions have changed a lot in the last few years. For a start, people are now doing more viewing on non-TVs like phones, tablets and computers and often not at home. Secondly, it’s no longer necessary to take out 12/24/36 month packages for multiple premium TV channels. The rise of Netflix, YouTube, Amazon and NOWTV are challenging the incumbents with the their pay monthly / cancel whenever you like model. So now, with a smart TV connected either by cable or WiFi, it’s possible to download/stream films and/or sporting events and apps straight on to your TV.
VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, a way of making phone calls, often much cheaper, over the internet. Many people have done this for some time, using skype on a computer. Today, you can keep your old landline number and register it with an internet phone service provider. All you then need is a small adatper which plugs into your router and then connect it to your VoIP or VoIP compatible phone and it will seem just like a landline, without the landline standing charge.
A Byte is a measurement of the size of data. A Kilobyte (KB) is equal to 1000 bytes (measurement for a unit of data). A Megabyte (MB, Meg) is equal to 1000 Kilobytes. A Gigabyte (GB) is equal to 1000 Megabytes. Bytes can be most easily understood in terms of data storage on your hard drive for example.
This is not to be confused with a Bit which is eight times smaller than a Byte. Broadband speeds are measured in Bits per second (Bps). A Kilobit (KBit) is equal to 1000 bits. A Megabit (MBit) is equal to 1000 Kilobits. A Gigabit (GBit) is equal to 1000 Megabits. So the takeway here is that you will almost always see broadband speeds measured in Megabits per second (Mbps) and if you don’t it’s probably a mistake or typo.
We don’t offer TV services directly but with our full fibre connection, you will be free to obtain hundreds of different channels through set top box solutions or broadband only services like;
Amazon Fire Stick/Prime, Netflix, Netgem TV, Now TV.
Sky UK has been widely reported to be soon offering Sky Q available without a satellite dish – via broadband only. So when that happens, you can get Sky TV too.
Of course, you can also get the digital terrestrial channel setup too like Freeview, BBC IPlayer, ITV Player etc.
The only service you won’t be able to get is Virgin TV – this is sold only through their proprietary cables connected to their network.
In a word, no. However, viewed dispassionately, long do you want to wait? Realistically, 5G broadband will be the future for a long time. 4G fixed wireless coverage is patchy and not covering swathes of London and where it does, is only 20 Mbps download. 5G will be faster, early indications are 80-100 Mbps – still a fraction of what you can do with fibre but not as fast on upload, unlike with fibre. However, we do not anticipate full geographic coverage of the UK with 5G masts until at least 2030. And on price, bandwidth and reliability a fibre optic cable will be ahead and beat a 5G connection every time. Unfortunately, the nature of mobile is that speed and connection quality will always be affected by other buildings, walls, microwaves and other WiFi signals. Fixed wireless 5G may also require an antenna with a clear line of sight of a distant mast.