New hyper fast broadband connections coming soon to the UK
Broadband has been rather quiet in the UK for over 18 months. But things are about to change. British Telecom has proudly announced a £1.5 billion fibre-optic distribution programme which will bring up to 100Mbit connection speeds to around 10 million homes by 2012, four years from now.
Spurred on by Ofcom, the independent office for communication that regulates and records the behaviour of large corporations in the Telecoms, TV, Radio and Spectrum industries, the former monopoly BT is the first to announce such plans.
Having always kept pace with the leading edge of home internet connections seen around the world, the UK can now hope to experience the same connectivity that some Scandinavians are already enjoying. The new infrastructure would also make it possible for BT to upgrade connections to 1Gbit and 10Gbit connections in the future. Soon your home network set-up may become the bottle neck as opposed to your ISP speed limitations. Ian Livington, BT’s CEO believes the news will help curb the predicted decrease in economic growth:
“Broadband has boosted the UK economy and is now an essential part of our customers’ lives. We now want to make a step-change in broadband provision which will offer faster speeds than ever before. This marks the beginning of a new chapter in Britain’s broadband story.
This is a bold step by BT and we need others to be just as bold. We are keen to partner with people who share our vision for the next phase of the broadband revolution. We want to work with local and regional bodies to decide where and when we should focus the deployment. Our aim is that urban and rural areas alike will benefit from our investment.”
Everything sounds healthily competitive over in the UK, and with Virgin Media only offering a cable retail level package of 50Mbits, BT may steal more market share with this faster wholesale package available for resellers to take advantage of. Either way, we look forward to seeing Virgin’s 50Mbit offering around Christmas time.
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