Thank you - I understand now.

Blue

That is exactly it: it is the amount of copper between you and the other end that is significant. At least for the distances we are talking about (exchange to cabinet) fibre communications can be considered to be relatively perfect.

Assuming the line from your cabinet to your home is fine and less than 300m in length, you'll get the full 40M/10M or close to (or 40M/2M on basic packages) before taking exchange/backhaul/ISP congestion into account. This is where the benefit of FTTC is: your line length that counts (the copper part) could drop from as much as 5K to as little as 0.1K. Even if you are in a very remote area and the cab is half a mile away, you should see significant improvement.

Once FTTP starts turning up, people who get that will not be limited by the copper at all, the limits then will be imposed by the exchange equipment and the box at their end of the line (and exchange/backhaul/ISP bandwidth congestion, of course), not the line length.

Thank you.

Blue

I've a good line but fibre will be available soon and have been looking at ISPs.

It's worth noting that plusnet's service is based on a 2Mbit upload speed rather than having the choice of 2Mbit/10Mbit with BT. Also the plusnet service has different traffic management policies than BT. Whilst they are clearer about what the limits are, i found them rather restrictive.

She has decided to go with BT Chris and has requested the MAC from Sky today.

I'm glad you agree they are a better choice than PlusNet; I appreciate PlusNet are a better business than a few years ago but I did have a poor experience with them in their turmoil, so a little nervous about going back!

Thanks - Blue