Business FTTP: Full Fibre Broadband Solutions for UK Businesses

How FTTP Differs from Standard Business Broadband

Most UK business broadband uses FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) technology. Fibre runs from the exchange to the green street cabinet; from there, the existing copper telephone line carries the signal to your premises. This copper section introduces significant limitations: maximum speeds of around 80Mbps download and 20Mbps upload, performance that degrades with distance from the cabinet, and sensitivity to line quality issues.

FTTP removes the copper entirely. A fibre optic cable runs from the exchange directly to your premises, providing speeds up to 1Gbps download with substantially better upload performance. The technology is also more reliable — fibre is less susceptible to interference, moisture ingress, and the physical degradation that affects ageing copper cable.

FTTP Speeds and What They Mean in Practice

Business FTTP products are typically available in tiers from 100Mbps up to 1Gbps download. For a business of 15 to 40 users running Microsoft 365, video conferencing, and standard cloud applications, a 500Mbps or 1Gbps FTTP product provides comfortable headroom for current usage and near-term growth.

Upload speed on FTTP is significantly better than on FTTC, though most products remain asymmetric. A 1Gbps FTTP product typically provides 100 to 200Mbps upload depending on the provider and tier. For businesses with heavy cloud backup requirements, video production workflows, or regular large file uploads, this improvement over FTTC upload speeds is practically meaningful.

Business vs Consumer FTTP

FTTP is available on residential products as well as business-grade services. The underlying fibre is the same, but the product terms differ in ways that matter for business use. Business FTTP products include static IP addresses (required for VPN and inbound services), priority fault support with defined response times, and account management. Consumer products typically use dynamic IPs, offer standard support queues, and have terms designed for household use.

AMVIA sources business-grade FTTP products exclusively. If your business is currently on a residential FTTP product, AMVIA can review whether a business product would better serve your requirements.

FTTP Providers in the UK

The UK's full-fibre network is served by multiple providers including Openreach (the wholesale network used by BT Business, Vodafone, and others), CityFibre (used by Zen, Vodafone, and others), Virgin Media Business (its own network), and a growing number of alternative network (altnet) providers. Coverage and pricing vary significantly by location.

AMVIA has access to the full market and checks availability across all networks for your specific address. In some locations, multiple providers offer FTTP coverage, and comparing them reveals meaningful differences in price, upload speed tiers, and SLA terms.

FTTP and Resilience

As a shared infrastructure product, FTTP does not carry the SLA commitment of a leased line. For businesses where connectivity resilience is important, AMVIA recommends pairing FTTP with a backup circuit — a second FTTP line from a different provider and preferably on a different physical network, or a 4G/5G backup router that activates automatically on line failure.

Bonded FTTP, where two FTTP circuits are combined for both additional bandwidth and failover, is increasingly viable as FTTP pricing has become more competitive. AMVIA can advise on whether a single FTTP line, bonded FTTP, or FTTP with a 4G backup is the right configuration for your risk profile and budget.

AMVIA's FTTP Management Service

AMVIA manages the FTTP provisioning process — placing the order, coordinating installation, and providing a single point of contact throughout. Once live, the circuit is monitored by AmviaIQ. Performance metrics are tracked and AMVIA detects degradation before it becomes disruptive. If a fault occurs, AMVIA opens and manages the carrier restoration ticket, tracking progress until resolution.