Fibrus broadband review: Is it any good?

Dan Howdle | August 22nd, 2023

Fibrus Broadband provides ultrafast pure fibre broadband to homes in selected locations across Northern Ireland and Northern England. If you've not heard of them that's hardly surprising but if you have, chances are you can get Fibrus are are keen to learn more.

Key features

Here’s a quick look at what you can expect to find in a Fibrus Broadband deal:

Download speeds	96Mbps, 286Mbps, 946Mbps, 1850-1950Mbps
Upload speeds	30Mbps, 100Mbps, 300Mbps (same on top two speeds)
Broadband	FTTP
Home Phone	Yes
Freebies to look for	None
Packages available	Broadband, Broadband and phone
Router	eero 6e, eero Pro 6e
Contract lengths	24 months
Prices from	£24.99 per month

Our review of Fibrus broadband

Besides outrageously fast download speeds, there are numerous benefits to choosing Fibrus Broadband – some of them quite uncommon in the world of broadband packages. The highlights are the no price-hike promise, meaning your price will not change across the length of your 24-month contract, and that Fibrus offers a buyout on your existing contract if you're still in-contract with another provider.

Fibrus offers four package levels, keeping things far simpler than the nine or ten available from many leading providers. They are Full Fibre 100, Full Fibre 300, Full Fibre 1000 and Full Fibre 2000, and the router you get from Fibrus will vary between the eero 6+ (100 or 300) or the eero Pro 6e (1000 or 2000).

With any package from Full Fibre 300 upwards, you'll get Fibrus Broadband's Total Home Wi-Fi guarantee, which promises at least 10Mbps over wifi in up to five bedrooms and three reception rooms. Should this minimum not be met, you will receive an engineer visit to optimise your router, and if that still doesn't work – perhaps your house has particularly high interference from neighbouring wifi networks or particularly thick walls – Fibrus will supply you with an additional router for free, which will dramatically expand your wifi's range.

Availability

It's unlikely you can get Fibrus Broadband, since it only operates in small selected towns and villages in Cumbria (more specifically the Penrith area), along with Northern Ireland. In total, its unique fibre network reaches just 250,000 homes, which may sound like plenty, until you see that most other providers reach around 26 million. However, Fibrus are continuing with a rapid expansion, so it's always worth checking availabilty when it comes to thinking about switching provider at the end of your contract.

Unlike most providers though, who piggyback on the Openreach network and pay Openreach for the privilege, Fibrus has build its own network, which is pure fibre. Pure fibre, which has many other names, including FTTP, FTTH, and full fibre, differs from the broadband you'd typically get at most addresses in the UK at the time of writing. Most so-called 'fibre broadband' actually only uses fibre optic cables as far as the cabinet on your street, with the remaining span between the cabinet and your home being comprised of copper cables. This type of fibre (also called FTTC or fibre to the cabinet) has a top speed of around 70Mbps.

Fibrus' limited availability is an issue, for sure. Only a narrow sliver of UK homes can get it. But if you can, you're going to have access to the fastest broadband in the UK. Fibrus offers packages up to a mind-bogglingly quick 2Gbps (2,000Mbps).

Check availability

Broadband speeds

Fibrus Broadband offers four different packages at various speed levels, ranging from fast to ludicrous. Here's an overview of the upload and download speeds offered by Fibrus:

Full Fibre 100: Offering an average download speed of 96Mbps – providers name their to the nearest round number but received averages tend to differ a little – the Full Fibre 100 package is plenty fast for most households, allowing 4K streaming, remote working and more. Probably should go a bit faster in a busy household with lots of internet users or a household full of gamers.

Full Fibre 300: Comes in at an average speed of 286Mbps. It's more than most households need, and we haven't even gotten to the really fast packages yet.

Full Fibre 1000: Offers an average speed of 946Mbps. Short of minimising time taken to download enormous videogames, no one needs anything this quick. Whether you want broadband this quick… well, that's up to you.

Full Fibre 2000: Fibrus doesn't advertise this package on its site, but we expect download speeds to be in the region of 1850 to 1950Mbps. If you want this, you'll need to reach out to Fibrus directly and, dare we say it, you'd be a little bit crazy to do so. There's really nothing you can do that needs broadband this fast, and at £99.99 per month at the time of writing, you'd need to at least have some reason to justify it.

Not sure which package to pick? Our guide to deciding what broadband speed you need has all the answers.

Upload speeds

Upload speeds indicate how fast you can copy or send data from your devices to the internet, cloud storage, or other devices. For most of us, upload speed is less important than download speed, as we stream more data than we send.

Those of us who work from home may take more of an interest in upload speeds, perhaps if you regularly store or share large documents online.

Here's a quick overview of the upload speeds you'll get with each package:

Package	Download speed	Upload speed
Full Fibre 100	96Mbps	30Mbps
Full Fibre 300	286Mbps	100Mbps
Full Fibre 1000	946Mbps	300Mbps
Full Fibre 2000	1850-1950Mbps	300Mbps

Landline calling packages

As is increasingly the case with broadband packages – especially full fibre ones – you won't get a working phone line (landline) as standard. Rather, you'll have the option to add one on with Fibrus. Fibrus Talk uses internet phone/digital phone/VoIP (take your pick on the terminology, it's all the same thing), rather than a traditional copper wire leading to a telephone exchange.

Fibrus Talk is about an extra tenner a month at the time of writing, and includes unlimited anytime calls to UK and Ireland fixed line and mobile numbers.

Routers and installation

There are two routers supplied with Fibrus Broadband – the eero 6+ with packages of 300Mbps or less, and the eero Pro 6e on any thing faster. What's more, you can add additional eero routers to your package for an additional monthly fee if you so choose, or should you so need (to expand the range of your home network).

Both routers are mesh wifi systems, with two discreet boxes to ensure maximum range/coverage of your home on any package 300Mbps+. Full Fibre 100 comes with just one eero6+. They're both impressive systems, and not at all cheap either, costing hundreds of pounds to buy outright at an electronics retailer.

Here are the specs for Fibrus Broadband's two mesh wifi routers:

eero 6+

• Gigabit speeds for less: Supports Wi-Fi speeds of up to one gigabit, without the premium price tag. eero 6+ is our most affordable gigabit system ever. Backwards compatible with previous-generation eero devices
• Wi-Fi 6 gets a bandwidth boost: eero 6+ supports additional Wi-Fi bandwidth on the 160 MHz radio channel (that’s just Wi-Fi speak for faster connectivity). With the eero 6+, you’ll get enough Wi-Fi for the whole family to work, stream and video chat, all simultaneously
• Experience the eero TrueMesh difference: Patented TrueMesh technology intelligently routes traffic to reduce drops and eliminate dead zones
• Set up in minutes: The eero app guides you through setup and allows you to manage your network from anywhere
• Gets better over time: Receive automatic updates to help keep your network safe and secure. Online security tools and additional network management features available via a separate subscription
• Built-in smart home hub: eero 6+ contains a smart home hub to connect compatible Thread and Zigbee devices on your network with Alexa, replacing the need to buy separate hubs
• Easily expand your system: With cross-compatible hardware, you can easily add eero products as your needs change

eero Pro 6E

• eero’s first Wi-Fi 6E router: eero Pro 6E supports fast speeds and direct access to the new 6 GHz band when using Wi-Fi 6E devices, resulting in lower latency
• eero’s fastest router yet: Supports network speeds up to 2.3 Gbps, when using both wired (up to a gigabit) and wireless (up to 1.3 Gbps) client devices
• More Wi-Fi for more devices: Network coverage of up to 190 m² and support for 100+ connected devices
• Set up in minutes: The eero app guides you through setup and allows you to manage your network from anywhere
• Gets better over time: Receive automatic updates to help keep your network safe and secure. Online security tools and additional network management features available via a separate subscription
• Built-in smart home hub: eero Pro 6E works as a smart home hub so you can control compatible Thread and Zigbee devices with Alexa. It also doubles as a border router to facilitate connections with Thread-enabled devices

Installation

When you place your order, Fibrus will gather information needed to estimate how long the installation will take and what's likely to be involved. Because Fibrus Broadband has its own network, every new installation will involve running a line from the street to your house, and in many cases have its own challenges.

On average, urban area installations take around 10 days, rural areas 20, but this varies. Additional checks or property surveys might be needed, impacting setup time. Fibrus manages checks and arrangements, confirming your installation date after checks. Delays are communicated.

Each installation varies by complexity. For extra work, a surveyor might evaluate your property, choosing optimal routes for the cabling, be it overhead from a pole or underground through a duct. Prior work, like civil engineering or excavation, might be necessary, occasionally affecting the installation timeline. Fibrus aims for minimal disruption.

Customer service

As a relatively new provider with a small customer footprint, Fibrus is not currently included in Ofcom's annual customer service reports. However, it does have a busy Trustpilot page with a 4.0 out of 5.0 customer rating – 61% of Fibrus customers giving the provider five stars out of five.

Our verdict: Very good

Generally, the kind of high speed full fibre broadband offered by Fibrus comes at a price, but Fibrus informs us they have a team that monitors competitor pricing weekly and always aim to be the cheapest, or close to it. Plus, the eero mesh routers it supplies with its broadband deals are leagues ahead of most of its competitors. This is premium broadband, like the best cut of the beef. And if the pricing is competitive too, then so much the better.

Downsides are obviously the very limited availability – it's incredibly unlikely you live somewhere you can get it – and the fact that as a provider with its own discreet broadband network, installation will involve more than someone popping over to your street and flipping a switch inside a green cabinet.

All that sad, if you can get it and you want the best broadband available, then this is all-but-certainly it. Even the likes of Virgin Media can't compete with the top speeds offered by Fibrus. One might argue broadband this fast is both unnecessary and expensive, but it's great to know the option is there.

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