Types of home broadband: what are ADSL, fibre and cable broadband?

If you are looking for a home broadband connection, around half of the population now has a choice between ADSL and cable broadband, while more and more are also now getting the choice of fibre broadband. 

In the simplest terms, ADSL broadband is delivered through a BT telephone exchange, while cable broadband comes from a new line that is run into your home by Virgin Media. 

All of Virgin's cable broadband is fibre, but BT has now launched it's own fibre product (Infinity) which is slowly becoming available across the UK from its exchanges.

While BT can supply broadband to most households in the UK, Virgin Media only has coverage to around 50 per cent of properties to date. 

To see which services you can expect to receive in your home, please enter your postcode on our main broadband comparison page.

ADSL

An Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, to give it its snappy full title, connects to the internet via a BT telephone exchange. ADSL technology converts your telephone line into a high-speed digital connection that completely blows away the speeds capable via old dial-up modems. To do this you need a microfilter that plugs into your telephone socket; it's a special sort of splitter that separates your voice call from your broadband data. This normally comes included with your broadband package and means you can still receive calls while online - the other big disadvantage of the older dial-up internet services.

Standard BT ADSL lines are capable of internet speeds of 'up to' 8Mb. The speed varies due to a number of factors, the main one being your distance from your local BT telephone exchange. However, an increasing number of internet service providers are now offering ADSL+ broadband, which can offer speeds of 'up to' 24Mb. This has been aided by local loop unbundling, or LLU - a process where companies such as O2, TalkTalk and BE are allowed access to BT exchanges to install their own equipment.

BT is now also starting to bring in ADSL+ as a free upgrade, which is a great bonus. However, this is starting in the big towns and cities and rolling out to the rest of us pretty slowly, so if a package says 'up to' 20Mb don 't get your hopes up too soon - you may still be stuck with a max of 8Mb for a couple more years.

Cable

There have been a host of cable companies around the UK over the years, that slowly amalgamated into two: NTL and Telewest. These then merged, and were rebranded Virgin Media in 2007.

Cable offers an alternative way to hook up not only your broadband, but also your telephone and TV services. It ignores any BT connection you may have, running a whole new cable into your home - if you're in a cabled area, of course. As mentioned above, cable is only available to about half of the population, so be sure to check you can get it in your home before considering it.

As well as offering broadband through its cables, Virgin Media offers a 'triple-play' of services that also includes a landline and cable television, which is roughly comparable to BT's Vision service, or Sky's satellite television service. Be aware you have to pay for a Virgin Media telephone line to receive its cable broadband service, regardless of whether you intend to use it or not. However, in most cases it is possible to port over your old BT number if you want to. You can of course cancel your BT phone line, as it is not required to run cable broadband, but it can be expensive to reconnect later if you decide against cable in future.

The big advantage with cable broadband right now is speed - thanks to its hybrid-fibre network, which deals with data better than BT's old copper wires, its slowest advertised speed is 'up to' 10Mb - faster than the standard ADSL offering. There is also less speed loss the further you are from the exchange. 30Mb, 50Mb and 100Mb lines are also available to more serious internet speed freaks, with testing taking place for a 200Mb service in the future. In the meantime.

BT Infinity fibre broadband

BT has also started to convert its old copper wires to fibre-optic ones and its super-fast 'Infinity' broadband, offering speeds 'up to' 40Mb, has started to appear in a limited amount of areas, but it is rolling it out at a good rate. Expect this top speed to rise in the not too distant future too. 

The advantage of a fibre connection over copper is that the signal doesn't degrade so much the further you are from the telephone exchange. But again, more rural customers shouldn't hold their breath! 

Which is best?

This isn't a question than can be answered simply, as everyone is looking for different things in a broadband deal. While cable is certainly faster right now, not everyone will need - or want to pay for - 40-100Mb broadband. 

The best advice we can offer is to put your details into our broadband comparison tool, look at all the options available to you, and make a decision based on your individual circumstances. You will find lots of other useful guides on the site too, which can help in every aspect of your decision, as well as opinions from customers who have bought the various products on offer.