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New customers considering whether to join UK broadband ISP CommunityFibre (CF), which has rolled out their full fibre (FTTP) network across 1.35 million UK premises (mostly in Greater London), may like to know that the provider will today replace their top 3Gbps (symmetric) speed package with an even faster 5Gbps premium plan.
The new residential package could perhaps be seen as a response to the growing competition in the market, which has witnessed a gradual rise in the number of ISPs offering multi-gigabit capable services and c.2Gbps packages now being relatively common. The shift from 3Gbps to 5Gbps thus helps to keep CommunityFibre in the top tier of performance providers, albeit primarily more useful for marketing than anything else.
The premium package follows similar pricing to their old 3Gbps tier and costs £59 per month on a 24-month term, which includes free setup, a wireless router and a 60-day satisfaction guarantee (i.e. no exit fees if you leave within this period). As usual, the monthly price of this package is locked until March 2026 and after that it will go up by £2 each April, but at the end of your contract the price will also increase by £4 versus your last month.
Community Fibre CEO, Graeme Oxby, said:
“We were originally planning to release London’s fastest fibre broadband on April 1st, but didn’t want Londoners to think our unbelievable speeds were an early April Fools! Truth is, Community Fibre provides unbeatable speeds at the best prices all year round, and there’s certainly no joking around when it comes to that!”
The classic problem with packages as fast as this is that most consumers would struggle to harness much of that top speed, usually due to WiFi/device limits and any limitations of the online servers you’re connecting to (Why Buying Gigabit Broadband Doesn’t Always Deliver). But if you’re happy to pay for it, why not. The rest of the internet will catch up, eventually.
Meanwhile, it’s worth remembering that some ISPs, such as YouFibre (Netomnia) and B4RN, already have packages based on even faster 10Gbps lines (usually averaging more like 7-8Gbps). But those cost a fair bit more, although this isn’t so relevant due to the primary issue of differing network availability.
Speaking of network availability, in London specifically, some of the FTTP networks built to larger MDUs by Telcom (now known as Elevate) did in fact offer 10Gbps broadband speeds to wealthy homes (flats). But that’s not really comparable to the sort of scale coverage that CommunityFibre can provide.
UPDATE 11:23am
Shortly after posting this we noticed (credits to YuGi) that CommunityFibre had updated their website again, this time to add a 2.5Gbps package too. But oddly, the package only shows for a few seconds as you scroll and then vanishes, so I took a screenshot just to confirm that I hadn’t gone dotty. However, it seems to show up fine if you click the ‘Standard’ or ‘Premium’ package tag further up, which is a little odd (it’s £35 on standard and £39 for premium with mesh WiFi).
