The UK government has announced six areas in the UK that will shortly be trying out broadband technology that provides data at speeds approaching one gigabit per second (gbps).
The pilots for the "full-fibre" network technology will be run in Aberdeenshire, West Sussex, Coventry and Warwickshire, Bristol, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.
The government said that it will spend about £10m getting the pilots up and running.
Full fibre involves taking high speed cables directly to buildings and doesn’t rely on older and slower copper for the final link, as tends to be the case with most existing fibre services in the UK.
Fast-fibre optic cables that run directly to homes or offices tend to provide a more stable, efficient and reliable connection than the hybrid systems which use copper and fibre and can support speeds up to 1Gbps.
At present, figures suggest that just 2 percent of buildings in the UK have access to full fibre networks and the government has said that it hopes these projects will help to boost the availability and take-up of the technology.
However, analysts have suggested that as full-fibre broadband gigabit-capable cables are expected to be shared between many different premises, it could mean that the actual data download speeds available to users may prove to be significantly below the theoretical maximum.
The funding for the gigabit-speed broadband pilots comes from a £200m fund announced in the budget earlier this year.
Author
Neil Tyler
Source: www.newelectronics.co.uk