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Superfast fibre broadband is one of the fastest types of broadband available on the market today (second only to ultrafast broadband).

Technically superfast broadband refers to a download speed average of around 24Mbps up to a maximum of 300Mbps.

There are only a small number of providers that have superfast broadband capability over 100Mbps on a widely available basis. The main providers of superfast broadband at this level are:

Virgin Media
BT
Gigaclear

Often customers will search for terms such as ‘Sky superfast’, ‘TalkTalk superfast’ and ‘EE superfast’ so there is some confusion among customers about how ‘superfast’ broadband speed levels are marketed in the industry. The majority of this confusion stems from the fact that every time technology moves forward the new generation is inevitably referred to as ‘superfast broadband’ within the broadband industry – taking the title from the now comparatively slower, older generation of broadband products.

Realistically making the case for having 100Mbps+ superfast broadband is largely the same as it would be for having a lower speed fibre optic broadband connection.

You need to ask yourself whether you would actually need the extra speed that superfast provides. An activity such as streaming content in HD or even 4k HD in the future would use broadband bandwidth extensively so having a fast line would be advantageous. Particularly so if there were multiple people streaming HD content at the same time across different devices.

Another important aspect to consider is the upload speed as well as download speed. If you work from home for instance perhaps in the IT industry, having a fast upload speed is as important as download speed. The fastest Virgin Media VIVID superfast broadband contract operates at an average 21Mbps upload speed which is no slouch!

The availability of superfast broadband will be entirely dictated by your location in the UK. By the standard definition of superfast broadband (24Mbps and above) there is over 95% coverage in the UK. However, if you want to get the fastest superfast broadband (100Mbps and over) the coverage drops to around the 60% to 65% level because the vast majority of contracts will be fulfilled by Virgin Media. This is changing slowly as new products arrive from other providers, such as the Superfast Fibre Plus from BT which averages 300 Mbps downstream and comes with a guarantee of at least 100 Mbps at all times.

If you want to get the fastest broadband possible use our broadband availability postcode checker and use the filters in the tool to show the fastest broadband available in your area.