Fab Fibre or Super Fibre?

[Fastwinger]

Trying to decide which broadband service will work best in our situation.  At present we have a 'fibre to the cabinet' service with a download speed of about 24mbps  but installers (City Fibre) are working on installing full fibre but we have no idea when this will go live. If we choose Super Fibre will we automatically get switched to the faster network when it goes live or would we have to negotiate a new contract with Now?  At the moment both services are quoting £22 pm.  Any thoughts would be helpful.

[gavs82008]

@Fastwinger 

Unfortunately NOW don’t offer any full fibre FTTP products. That’s BT and Sky to name a couple.

You can sign up to the non contracted broadband with NOW so you can leave without penalty. 

[chilli2]

Now only sell Fibre to the cabinet, that is the fibre optic cable goes to ( usually) a green cabinet in the street, and form there copper ( or if you are unlucky aluminium) cables to your property .

You say you have a "fibre to the cabinet " service, but with who? and on what package?

If you sign upto Nows top package you  will be on FTTC and you will not switch to any "full fibre" FTTP network.

 If at some point in the future Now offer full fibre/FTTP then it wil most likely be over the openreach network, and not an alt net like city fibre.

 You may be better off asking in a more specialist forum, such as ISP review for when you can expect city fibre to go live - if city fibre wont/cant tell you - and depending upon your current package either sign up to Now for 12 months, or wait it out for CF to go live.

But just to be clear Now do not currently offer any full fibre packages, only copper based services. and if they did it would be unlikely that they would switch you over

[Fastwinger]

Thanks very much for a detailed and very helpful reply which cleared up a number of areas of uncertainty.  I'm with John Lewis (Plusnet) at present but need to make a change as that service is stopping.  Will probably go with Now Super Fibre for 12 months and see what options there are on expiry.

[redchiz1]

Fab Fibre is up to 35Mbps, Super Fibre 63 Mbps. Both are FTTC and if you can only get 24 Mbps it really won't make any difference. NOW do not currently, nor as far as I am aware have any plans to offer Full Fibre, so if that is what you are interested in you may want to bide your time for a while and look to other providers when that becomes available.

[chilli2]

Before i moved to Now, i was with plusnet on their unlimited fibre package, this has a theretical top speed of 40mbps down and 10 up, realisticaly i was getting around 25 down and 6 up

 I moved to Nows "super fibre" which is based on an FTTC 80 down and 20 up service ( maximum speeds) averages about 60ish. my speeds are around 55 down and 16 up

 I could have stayed on the same speed profile with Now (Fab fire) but there was no differnece in price between fab and super so it was worth it just to see

[Fastwinger]

Thanks for your reply. I will probably switch to Now Super Fibre and if I get a faster speed than currently that will be a  bonus!

[redchiz1 · Accepted solution]

As @chilli2 inferred and I should have been clearer in what I said, if you are going to go for NOW broadband you may as well go for the higher speed version at the same price.  🙂

[Fastwinger]

Thanks for your very helpful reply 

[Jayach]

If you are currently only getting 24Mbs, you are unlikely to get more on Now, but yes definitely go for Super Fibre as it is the same price as Fab Fibre. You should be given an estimate of your expected speed, when you sign up.

You can see what Openreach believe your line capable of here:

BT Broadband (btwholesale.com)

[Fastwinger]

Thanks Jayach, I used the speed checker to see what we could get and although our speed is towards the bottom of the range, moving to Now should not at least, mean any worse speed.