What is FTTC?
FTTC stands for Fibre To The Cabinet (or Curb). BT call it “Infinity”.
With conventional ADSL2+ setups, the “last mile” connection is made between your nearest phone Exchange and your ADSL router by copper (or if you are unlucky, aluminium) cable. This is normal phone cable originally intended for carrying voice. The longer it is, the worse your data rate as it has losses and picks up noise between the exchange and your ADSL router.
FTTC dramatically reduces this (assuming you have a cabinet with FTTC nearby) as the fibre is run to your nearest green curbside box (cabinet) from where the “exchange side” of the connection is made to your line. This means that the line length can be dramatically shortened and hence much higher data rates are available.
In my case it goes from about a a mile down to about 100 meters with FTTC. BT’s estimator says my line should achieve 38.5Mbit/s down and 9.1Mbit/s up. As my line is particularly good (the external cabling comes right in all the way to to the master socket with no joints), and BT are probably being conservative to avoid angry customers, more can often be achieved.
Be aware that the 10Mbit/s upstream is an option that currently costs extra with AAISP. @
