The UK government has announced the six areas that are to pilot a fast broadband trial. The pilot will spend £10mn to stimulate the market place for full fibre delivery to the premises. This is followed by £190mn over the next four years.
This is different to the more normal Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) deployment used by BT OpenReach or Virgin Media. This isn’t useful for the home, as this technology pilot is serving offices and public sector buildings. And unless you’re in one of the served areas, you’re not even able to participate.
The six areas are:
- Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire
- Bristol and Bath & North East Somerset
- Coventry and Warwickshire
- Greater Manchester
- West Sussex
- West Yorkshire
The aim is to connect a set of trial locations to the network at Gigabit speeds, with the aim of speeding business, healthcare and learning.
“We want to see more commercial investment in the gold standard connectivity that full fibre provides, and these innovative pilots will help create the right environment for this to happen. To keep Britain as the digital world leader that it is, we need to have the right infrastructure in place to allow us to keep up with the rapid advances in technology now and in the future.” – Matt Hancock MP, Minister of State for Digital