Fibre To The Cabinet - FTTC

"Fibre To The Cabinet" also known as FTTC is Fibre Optic cable being installed from the telephone exchange to the street side telephone cabinet and is used to deliver communications such as broadband, digital TV and telephone.

Fibre Optic cable is able to offer much faster speeds than copper wire and much more bandwidth than copper wires are able to cope with which is why Fibre Broadband is the future to next generation broadband. Virgin Media is the UK's main cable broadband provider.

The next step up from FTTC is FTTH where the fibre optic cable is installed all the way to the Home and not just the cabinet although his does cost more money to install.

The negative factor with regards to installing FTTH is the costs. For FTTH to be installed across the UK an estimate of around £10-£15 billion is expected.

BT are rolling out their fibre optic broadband network, call BT Infinity, which for most will offer a Fibre To The Cabinet connection and broadband speeds of up to 40Mb.