Community Fibre vs BT broadband

Community Fibre offer cheap, but fast, full fibre to the home broadband connections in and around London.

Meanwhile, BT are the UK's largest provider, covering 93% of the UK and 92% of London, while their full fibre network has so far reached around 34% of the capital.

While these two providers are markedly different, we'd lean towards Community Fibre over BT, as their prices are almost half that of BT across all package tiers.

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At a glance

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Price

Winner: Community Fibre offer cheaper and more affordable broadband packages than BT does.

Community Fibre are cheaper than BT, with their prices currently coming in almost half the price of equivalent BT deals.

Their current promotional offer on their 150Mb plan at £18.99 per month is one of the cheapest broadband deals available in the UK right now.

In contrast, BT's lowest price deal is their part-fibre Fibre 1 and Full Fibre 100 plans, which both cost £29.99 per month. While customers currently get a £50 Reward Card for signing up, these deals are still much more expensive over the length of the contract.

For the extra money though, BT customers can choose to bundle extra services including a more flexible home phone line and a flexible way to access Sky premium TV content through NOW Memberships.

However, Community Fibre also win points in the price category for their approach to out of contract price rises, which they've decided to cap at just £4 extra, and customers who sign up before 4th November 2024 won't receive any mid-contract price hikes during their term.

For households struggling with their bills during the cost of living crisis both Community Fibre and BT offer social broadband tariffs. Yet again, Community Fibre is much cheaper costing just £12.50 per month compared to BT's lowest price tariff at £15.

Overall, for the cheapest broadband Community Fibre are the easy choice over BT if they're available in your area.

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Broadband packages

Winner: Community Fibre offer cheaper prices for equivalent full fibre deals than BT, although BT offers more extras like the EE TV service.

Both Community Fibre and BT offer a range of broadband deals, with Community Fibre offering dedicated full fibre and BT still supporting older fibre to the cabinet options, as well as their own selection of full fibre packages.

Cheapest broadband

Community Fibre's cheapest option is currently their 150Mb plan, which is on offer for just £18.99 per month. In comparison, BT's equivalent Full Fibre 100 plan costs almost twice as much.

It's not even possible to get broadband from BT for less than £29.99 per month, so Community Fibre's deal which is over £10 less each month than BT's slowest broadband package offers serious value for money.

Ultrafast broadband

Both BT and Community Fibre offer packages with ultrafast download speeds. Community Fibre offer a 300Mb and 500Mb plan, while BT also offer a 300Mb and 500Mb full fibre plan.

BT continue to offer their £50 Reward Cards on full fibre plans, yet over the length of the contract customers will still save more with Community Fibre's cheaper prices.

For example, over 24 months the Community Fibre 300Mb plan would cost £504 in total, whilst BT's equivalent deal would come to almost twice as much at a total of £911.76 (or £861.76 less the reward voucher). This simple calculation highlights just how much more value for money Community Fibre are offering.

Gigabit broadband

It's possible to sign up for gigabit broadband speeds with both BT and Community Fibre, with each provider offering similar average download speeds.

As with their ultrafast and superfast plans however, Community Fibre are still much more affordable with a total cost over the contract of £624, compared to £1151.76 with BT.

In addition, for those who want the fastest broadband, it's worth pointing out Community Fibre offer symmetrical upload and download speeds on their full fibre connections, whilst BT offer just 110Mb upload speeds on their gigabit plan.

Overall, while BT do bundle in extras, including a money-back voucher of £50 at the time of writing, Community Fibre offer the best value for money for a faster broadband connection.

For those who can get it then, Community Fibre is the better choice when compared to BT. Read more in our Community Fibre review and our review of BT broadband.

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TV

Winner: BT TV is more comprehensive than the Community Fibre partnered Netgem TV service.

Community Fibre and BT both offer their broadband customers exclusive access to a premium TV service.

However, there is a notable difference between the two services, with BT offering the ability to access premium content from Sky, while the Netgem TV service offered by Community Fibre misses out on some of the most popular channels.

While Community Fibre's TV service does support Netflix, Prime Video, Britbox and Discovery+, it misses out on Sky Sports, Sky Cinema, and Sky Entertainment channels like Sky Atlantic.

In contrast, all these are optional with BT TV, which also includes Netflix and Discovery+ as standard in its Entertainment and Sports packages respectively.

In addition, BT TV customers have the added benefit of being able to switch TV plans on a monthly basis, so one month they can be watching sports, and the next switch to an entertainment or movies plan.

Overall, while the TV service from Netgem will be adequate for many people, the BT TV service is much more comprehensive and likely to keep viewers satisfied with the wider range of premium content available.

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Broadband speed

Winner: Community Fibre offer faster speeds overall, with symmetrical uploads and full fibre connections as standard.

Community Fibre offer customers a range of broadband speed options from 50Mb to 920Mb, and even a 3000Mb package.

Meanwhile, BT offer customers a choice of superfast plans from 36Mb to 900Mb gigabit broadband.

It's worth noting that while BT's Fibre Essential, Fibre 1 and Fibre 2 packages are much more widely available - around 97% of UK homes can get them - the fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) connections can be slower and less reliable than the full fibre to the home plans.

FTTC connections can experience attenuation (slowing down) due to distances between a customer's home and the nearest street cabinet, as well as from the exchange.

Full fibre connections on the other hand, as offered by Community Fibre as standard and BT on their full fibre packages, delivers broadband via a fibre optic cable laid directly into a customer's home, which means the connection is unaffected by distance and provides a faster and more stable connection overall.

One of the biggest differences between Community Fibre and BT regarding broadband speed is that Community Fibre's network provides symmetrical upload and download speeds, which can be useful for people working from home, making video calls, or online gaming where data is sent to the Internet as well as downloaded from it.

In contrast, BT's upload speeds are much slower than its headline download speeds, with even their fastest gigabit package only offering 110Mb upload speeds on average.

Read more about the fastest broadband in the UK.

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Routers

Winner: Community Fibre offer a slightly more advanced router on their faster plans, with most customers getting a WiFi 6 enabled device, while BT only offer customers the WiFi 5 BT Smart Hub 2.

Community Fibre provide customers taking its broadband service with a Linksys router, with faster packages coming with a newer WiFi 6 enabled model.

Customers taking 150Mb plans and upwards get a WiFi 6 dual-band version of the Linksys router, which means newer devices, like Sky Stream or some mobile phones and tablets that also support WiFi 6 will be able to connect at faster speeds.

All router options support mesh and customers on the 1Gb and 3Gb plans can choose to upgrade to the Premium WiFi service which costs £6 extra per month and provides additional Linksys mesh routers to help extend the wireless network seamlessly across larger homes or where solid walls are causing the WiFi signal to deteriorate.

BT provide all of their broadband customers with the BT Smart Hub 2. First launched in 2018 a year after the Linksys Velop router, the BT Smart Hub 2 supports dual band WiFi on the 802.11ac or fifth WiFi protocol.

WiFi 5 supports speeds of up to 1.73Gb depending on the mode used, and the BT Smart Hub 2 also supports intelligent mesh so it can also be seamlessly extended with boosters like Community Fibre's Linksys devices.

BT Complete WiFi also offers customers a WiFi guarantee for £10 per month. BT provide customers with up to three Complete WiFi discs to improve a wireless signal around a home. The guarantee promises a 'strong' signal in every room or customers get a £100 bill credit.

The only downside to BT Complete WiFi is if it fails to deliver the add-on contract can't be cancelled and has a 24-month minimum term.

Overall, we think Community Fibre win over BT when it comes to the router provided, despite the limitations of their WiFi guarantee add-on to just 1Gb and 3Gb plans that not everyone will justify.

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Call plans

Winner: BT offers a more comprehensive and flexible approach to a home phone service than Community Fibre.

Community Fibre broadband comes without a home phone line as standard, but customers can add one for an extra £10 per month.

For this, they also get unlimited anytime calls to UK landlines and mobiles. However, premium numbers and international calls aren't supported by the phone service.

BT broadband also comes without a phone line as standard, but can be added with pay as you go calls that cost 28.18 pence per minute for £5 per month.

Customers can also upgrade to inclusive calls, with unlimited minutes to UK landlines and UK mobiles costing £18 per month.

Community Fibre's home phone service uses a digital line which is reliant on mains electricity to work and sends the voice signal over the Internet connection. While some on BT may still be using the analogue phone network, full fibre customers will be moved to a digital line as well which works in a similar fashion to Community Fibre.

Overall, BT offer more flexibility for people wanting to make use of their home phone service, but Community Fibre's straightforward approach provides good value for money.

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Customer Service

Winner: Community Fibre has an untarnished Trustpilot profile with 90% of Excellent reviews from over 44,000 reviewers, yet, BT also perform well in official research.

BT had just under the industry average of broadband and landline complaints in Ofcom's most recent complaints data, and considering their size they also rank in the top three providers for customer service according to our own market research.

Community Fibre aren't large enough to be featured in Ofcom data yet, but they're one of the highest ranked providers on Trustpilot, with a Trustscore of 4.5 out of 5 from over 54,000 reviews.

They also picked up the Best Consumer ISP award at the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) in 2021 and 2020, and were only beaten by Hyperoptic in the 2022 awards.

According to Ofcom's Comparing Service Quality report, published in May 2023, BT had one of the most satisfied customer ratings out of all the major broadband providers, scoring 83% for satisfaction with overall service, and 80% for satisfaction with speed of service, both over or inline with the industry average of 82% and 80% respectively.

The same report also noted BT had just 19% of customers with a reason to complain compared to the industry average of 20%. This figure was only beaten by customer service heroes Sky, NOW, and EE, the latter being part of the BT Group.

Overall, we'd say it's a tightly run race for customer service between BT and Community Fibre, although as BT are around third in Ofcom's reports, we'd suggest Community Fibre's untarnished Trustpilot reviews may win this round for them.

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Availability

Winner: BT Broadband has wider availability than Community Fibre and more rapid rollout targets for their full fibre broadband network.

Community Fibre is a dedicated London broadband provider and so their network is only available in the capital. So far, the provider has passed over 1.3 million homes and has also recently merged Box, a network in Surrey and Sussex.

In comparison, while superfast BT broadband is available to over 92% of London homes, BT's full fibre network so far only reaches 34% of them, or around 1.2 million.

Outside of London, BT full fibre broadband is available to over 14 million premises at the time of writing, with the provider aiming to reach 25 million by the end of 2026.

Looking at the below map from Thinkbroadband, we can see the penetration of Community Fibre broadband across London:

In comparison, this is full fibre coverage in London on the Openreach network as sold by BT:

We can see from these coverage maps that Community Fibre and BT are fairly even in terms of coverage, although clearly some areas are covered by one provider and not the other yet. Although, so far, approximately 25% of UK homes have the choice of two or more full fibre networks.

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Verdict: Community Fibre or BT broadband?

Overall Winner: Community Fibre are the cheaper, more straightforward, broadband provider, with full fibre connections as standard.

Both BT and Community Fibre are strong broadband provider contenders, both performing well for customer service and complaints metrics, and catering well for different types of customer.

Yet, these providers are also substantially different, with Community Fibre operating solely in London, and BT being the largest provider across the UK.

We like Community Fibre because:

• Cheapest and most affordable broadband deals
• Full fibre connections as standard
• Symmetrical upload and download speeds
• Advanced Linksys WiFi 6 routers on most plans

In contrast, BT are the better option for:

• Customers who want a more flexible home phone service
• Bundling the BT TV platform with access to Sky Atlantic, Sky Cinema and Sky Sports alongside Netflix and TNT Sports
• Wider availability with larger expansion targets means BT will be an option for more homes than Community Fibre

Overall, if customers living in London are lucky enough to have the choice between Community Fibre and BT full fibre we'd be minded to go with the cheaper option and opt for Community Fibre, unless TV is important and then BT TV might win over.

Read more on the differences between Community Fibre and Virgin Media and BT or Virgin Media for another strong London provider.