What’s the difference between FTTH and FTTC?

When picking an internet service provider (ISP) for your home or business, it’s important to know exactly what you’re getting. Whether it’s a local co-op or a national giant, the speeds, latency, and bandwidth that you can expect depend on how the signal reaches your building.

You might have seen the acronyms FTTC (Fiber-to-the-Curb) or FTTH (Fiber-to-the-Home) mentioned when researching ISPs, especially those that offer fiber-optic connections. The names aren’t dissimilar, and aren’t that different in practice, but the “last mile” to your home differs in how it’s achieved.

FTTH (or FTTB or FTTP) vs FTTC at a glance

FTTH vs FTTC – It’s all about the last few feet of connectivity

One is fiber-optic all the way, while one opts for copper wires

Fiber-to-the-Home and Fiber-to-the-Curb are the two most common ways that optical fiber internet is provided to end users. They both promise high-speed internet, low-latency connectivity, and powerful network performance. You probably noticed that there were four acronyms in the earlier table, but Fiber-to-the-Premises is synonymous with Fiber-to-the-Home, and Fiber-to-the-Building is less used now, in favor of running fiber to individual apartments wherever possible.

Source: Unsplash

There aren’t that many differences between FTTH and FTTC anymore, not with newer cable connectivity standards that can support up to 10 Gigabit speeds over coaxial. But one important distinction remains—which material carries the network packets over the last section to your building.

For FTTC, your ISP uses fiber for the backbone across their network, which goes into a cabinet near to where your home is. The distance varies, but it’s almost always under a thousand feet, and the rest of the distance is handled by copper wires or coaxial cable. This has a few benefits for the ISP, mainly that they can use existing infrastructure and upgrade the backend only, with minimal disruption to their users.

For FTTC, your ISP uses fiber for the backbone across their network, which goes into a cabinet near to where your home is. The distance varies, but it’s almost always under a thousand feet, and the rest of the distance is handled by copper wires or coaxial cable. This has a few benefits for the ISP, mainly that they can use existing infrastructure and upgrade the backend only, with minimal disruption to their users.

With FTTH or FTTP, the connection to your home or premises is all optical fiber, terminating in an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) either outside or inside your home, that acts like a modem, translating the ISP network communications into those that your internal home network can use, and vice versa.

So between FTTC or FTTH, which one do you want?

Let’s make sure one thing is clear first: all ISPs use fiber for their main network connectivity, regardless of what comes into your home. The only difference is whether the last thousand feet or fewer are comprised of coaxial or copper cables instead of having fiber come into your home and into an ONT (Optical Network Terminal). With “cable” internet companies able to give multi-gigabit download speeds, the need for FTTH is slightly lower, but the only way you’ll get symmetrical speeds for downloads and uploads is with FTTH.

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