Bournemouth floats UK's first 100Mbps sewer broadband network
Insert fibre/ Wii/ pipe/ download / backdoor/ flush/ log pun here
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Bournemouth will be the UK's first town to benefit from a town-wide fibre network, with 100Mbit/s access available to businesses and consumers, via the sewer system.
H2O Networks, a start-up we wrote about earlier this year, will lay cable to more than 88,000 homes at a cost of about £30m.
The firm is funded by venture capital, and aims to begin deployment in September. The project is scheduled to take two-and-a-half years over five stages, with each covering more than 17,000 premises.
The Bournemouth development has the backing of the local council. Officials hope the fibre network will attract more business to the area. A pilot network has already been installed to connect council buildings across the town, which was up against fellow commercial powerhouses Dundee and Northampton for the bragging rights conferred by the first full depolyment.
H2O Networks managing director Elfred Thomas outlined the ambition of the scheme. "This will be the world's largest single fibre deployment," he said. "It's not just a one off. We are working with our partners here and overseas to create more Fibre Cities."
It's not known how much 100Mbit/s will cost consumers or businesses yet. H2O Networks plans to act only as the network owner. It'll lease access to broadband and IPTV providers over the top, and let them do the billing and customer service donkey work, including taking the fibre from the street access point into the home. The price consumers end up paying will be dependent on the terms of these deals, says H2O Networks.
Thomas expects to announce the first of these deals very soon.
The company also aims to profit from a whole range of untapped fibre to the premises applications such as healthcare and education systems. "That's the whole point of Fibre Cities," Thomas said.
H2O Networks reckons it can cover the whole country inside a few years at much lower cost than the £15bn figure for a national fibre network being bandied about in Whitehall. Ofcom has only just begun to nudge BT and others to consider using existing duct infrastructure.
Running fibre in the sewers means huge savings on civil engineering costs. H2O Networks' workers will use the sewers to get cable as close to premises as possible. They'll then use a system called blown mini ducting to get the cable to the door via a 20mm-wide, 100mm-deep channel. The firm is to write to Bournemouth residents for permission to do the work, which will cause minimal disruption and cost them nothing, it says. ®
COMMENTS
@Anonymous Coward
As an ex-serviceman, it pains me to say it, but "Well, at least UK won one or the other war in contrast to France" just isn't historically accurate. The contribution of the French Army to winning WWI was greater than the British - in killed, wounded, men involved, sectors of the line held, etc. It is also sadly true that Russia won WWII against the Germans, not the West.
More on topic, without more technical info on the service, it's impossible to say if it will be either good or cost-effective. What optical kit are they deploying? Are they using Spanning Tree? RST? VPLS? h-VPLS? Q-in-Q or MAC-in-MAC? We need more info than "fibre at 100Mbps"
PS HK, like most of the much-lauded Far East, only gives good connectivity to high-density MTUs. Try living in the sticks, and see what broadband speeds you get - IP over OX-Cart!
Cheap customers
Bournemouth full of tightwads is it? It would explain this comment:
Its about time too... we're so far behind in internet technology.
There again, so would this:
Hope the prices are competitive, if not super-cheap as we're testing this stuff for them.
Assuming the preliminary figures of £30 million were cooked up by the PR men and that no long term damage to the sewers is involved. And that there are no snags (ha.. in a British sewer?) that is £340 per customer before profit.
And they want it for free?
Fibrecities
Will someone PLEASE tell this company that the city of Kingston-upon-Hull NEEDS this technology !! Hull is the ONLY city in the whole UK that has ZERO choice of ISP or for that matter telco provider. The whole infrastructure including isp servers, phone lines, exchanges, you name it, belong to Kingston Communications and are operated as an effective monopoly which OFCom refuses to even investigate properly.
This fibre by sewers system looks to me like a God-send to us. See this link for further comment/info on the subject from Hull residents themselves on the standards of service and treatment we get >> http://karooforums.net/index.php
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