Broadband in Greater Manchester

Just pop your postcode into our broadband comparison tool and see what’s available. If you can get fibre it should be shown in your results.  
 
Your fibre options might include fibre to the cabinet and fibre to the premises which can be much faster than copper broadband. And you may be able to get Virgin broadband, which has already wired up a lot of places and premises in London. 
 
Unfortunately fibre, whether to the cabinet or your premises, isn’t available everywhere yet. But high-speed internet is being rolled out all the time.  
 
Openreach, the UK’s digital infrastructure company, has said its First Build programme, updated in September 2020, plans to roll out full fibre in the next 10 years, adding two exchanges in Tameside to its list. 
 
Virgin Media, which currently reaches just over 44% of homes in the UK, is rolling out Project Lightning to deliver ultrafast broadband into homes across the country, including some parts of Manchester. Virgin has made available Gig1 Fibre Broadband with download speeds averaging over 1Gbps (gigabits per second) to approximately 500,000 homes around the Greater Manchester area. 

CityFibre, a digital infrastructure provider, is also cabling up parts of Bolton for a full fibre network for its consumer service providers. 

Whether full fibre is available to you may depend on how far you are from the exchange and it’s not a guarantee that full fibre will be run into every premises.  
 
Other fibre installers may have plans for Greater Manchester, so it’s worth checking to see what options are available. 

If your local exchange is set up for fibre, you’re more likely to be able to get it, but it’ll depend on whether the cables run to the cabinet nearest your home. This list shows the fibre-enabled exchanges in Greater Manchester currently taking orders for fibre connections, according to Openreach.

Key:

FTTC – Fibre to the cabinet

FTTP – Fibre to the premises

FOD – Fibre on demand

If where you live isn’t on the Openreach list, there are still ways to encourage providers to consider getting fibre to your address. You’ll need to register your interest with relevant providers. When they have enough willing subscribers, they’re more likely to bring it to your area.

Also, there are some community-based options. Here a joint funding arrangement is put in place, which means the provider, Openreach for example, contributes some of the costs and your community funds the rest. An affordable solution is then put in place to meet the community needs.

Openreach has guidance on how to start this kind of community project if you’re interested. If you and enough neighbours are fed up with slow speeds, you might be able to prompt some action – a good place to start is by talking to your local council. If you live in a housing association property or council property, you could try persuading them to push for getting your estate or development cabled up faster.

The ideal speed for you depends on what you use your broadband for.

Streaming – You’ve just reached a gripping moment in your favourite boxset and the drama is ruined by endless buffering. If this is happening to you, check out the minimum download speeds you need for happy viewing. Netflix needs higher rates than iPlayer or even YouTube, at 3Mbps (megabits per second) for non HD and 5Mbps for HD. If you love catching up with friends and family on Zoom or other video calling services, you’ll need at least 3Mbps for group calls. See more in our guide to speeds needed for streaming.

Online gaming – Whether it’s a first-person shooter or a point and click puzzler, having good connectivity can make a difference. Fast speeds offer a better experience both when playing and downloading new titles. Take a look at the minimum download speeds needed in our guide for gamers.

Working from home – A combination of more flexible working arrangements and the coronavirus pandemic have meant more people than ever are working from home, including in Manchester. For web browsing you’ll need between 1 Mbps and 5 Mbps. If there’s more than one of you trying to work at home, it might help to ramp up your download speed to 16Mbps or more to help get things done when working online.

Get more information on broadband for working from home.