Full-Fibre Broadband for Rural Cambridgeshire
Pure-fibre, gigabit-capable broadband for the towns and villages around Cambridge — built for communities that have been overlooked by the larger national networks.
What is the purpose of this project?
Cambridge Fibre is installing an entirely new broadband network in towns and villages around Cambridge. The network uses no copper cabling and no legacy BT cabinets — it is fibre all the way from our exchange to your front door.
Because there is no copper in the path, every customer on our network gets predictable, advertised speeds — regardless of distance from a cabinet or how busy the line is. That is what we mean by full-fibre, and it is what every property deserves.
What is full-fibre, and why does it matter?
Most 'Superfast Fibre' services in the UK are part-fibre: optical fibre is run as far as a green street cabinet, and the final stretch into your home travels over the original copper telephone line. The longer that copper run is, the slower and less reliable the service.
Full-fibre, by contrast, eliminates copper from the connection entirely. Every customer is on the same medium, with the same headroom, all the way from the exchange to the equipment in their home.
Independent research by Ofcom has shown full-fibre to be up to five times more reliable than part-fibre alternatives. Speeds are guaranteed rather than 'up to'. Gigabit (1000 Mbps) headline speeds deliver around 935 Mbps of usable bandwidth, and the underlying optical fibre is future-proofed: the same physical cable is capable of carrying 10 or even 100 gigabit services as the network equipment is upgraded over time.
What full-fibre delivers
How long it takes to download a 4K HD movie (50 GB)
Based on a theoretical 50 GB download at a sustained sync rate. Real-world speeds vary by connection type, contention and overheads.
How is this project funded, and how do you order?
Builds in eligible villages are part-funded by the UK government's Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme. Where a property qualifies, the voucher covers the cost of installing the connection — there is no installation fee for you to pay.
When you place an order, we will request a voucher from the government on your behalf. You will receive a confirmation email from them with the scheme rules. If for any reason a voucher is not granted to you, you can cancel your order without penalty.
Beyond the free installation, voucher-funded projects bring spare fibres to the streets they pass through. This means neighbours who decide to connect later usually face a much smaller installation cost than they would if they were the first on the road.
Read more on our dedicated Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme page.
Why does it matter that we act as a community?
Voucher rounds operate to defined deadlines. The mechanism is deliberately community-driven — when enough households and businesses on a street commit, the project becomes viable, and a network gets built that otherwise would not.
Several rural Cambridgeshire villages would not have been served at all on commercial timelines. Banding together within a project window is what made these builds happen.
If your village is in our planned-build area, the best thing you can do is express interest now. We can then work out whether there is enough demand on your street to take it forward, request the vouchers, and start building.
If your village is not yet on our list, get in touch — we will tell you honestly whether it is realistic to add, and what level of community demand would make it possible.
Does access to full-fibre affect house values?
Yes. Major UK property portals — RightMove and Zoopla among them — now display broadband speeds prominently on every listing. Studies have estimated that poor broadband can reduce a property's value by 20–25% relative to the same property with a future-proof connection. Full-fibre is increasingly considered a baseline expectation for buyers, particularly those who work or run businesses from home.
I run a business from home — should I take a residential or business voucher?
If you have a registered business, you should generally take the business voucher. It carries a higher value and helps the wider project: the additional headroom can be used to cross-subsidise residential installations on the same build, making more streets viable.
When will the build start, and when will I be connected?
A typical village build runs over roughly twelve months once construction is committed. Once the streetworks reach your address you can choose your installation date to suit you — installations are by appointment, not unannounced.
First connections in a project area are usually live within around four months of work starting, with the rest of the village following over the months that follow. We will keep you up to date with progress on your specific street as the build proceeds.
Will there be a lot of noise and disruption?
No. Wherever possible we use existing underground ducts and overhead telegraph poles, so most installations require no new digging. Where new ducting is needed it is small-scale and short-duration. Optical equipment also draws a fraction of the energy of legacy copper electronics, so the running carbon footprint of the network is dramatically lower.
Ready to order?
Start by checking your address. We will tell you whether your property is in a planned-build area, and if a voucher-funded project is open to new orders.