Milton Keynes to become first UK WiMax town

By Steve Malone

Posted on 21 Aug 2006 at 10:54

Milton Keynes, famous for its concrete cows and its migrated football team, will soon have a new honour. The new town is about to become the first major location in the UK with blanket WiMax coverage.

According to a report by Reuters, Intel is to partner with ISP Pipex to create a 'city-wide' WiMax network that will provide full broadband coverage of possibly up to 10Mbs. The choice of Milton Keynes is the first concrete announcement by the two companies who announced the partnership earlier this year. They have, however, very recently completed a trial in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The move will catapult the new town into one of the top wired locations in the UK. Just weeks ago, Milton Keynes was recorded as having one of the highest broadband penetration in the UK.

Milton Keynes has a problem with broadband connections. Following its rapid expansion in the 1970s, the decision was taken to lay aluminium cables rather than copper. However, this penny-wise pound-foolish decision has rebounded as the cable is now unable to cope with the new faster broadband speeds and telecoms and cable companies do not want to pick up the bill for relaying the wiring for the whole area.

WiMax is seen as a solution to provide broadband to Milton Keynes's 220,000 inhabitants. However, the Wimax network is likely to be introduced piecemeal rather than switching it all on at once.

Based around the proposed IEEE 802.16 wireless standard, WiMax holds out the promise of ultra-fast broadband. Compared with the Wi-Fi standard it can provide increased bandwidth and range. As such it is being seen as a way of delivering a new generation of data and video services to mobile devices such as notebooks and PDAs in high density urban environments.

Prior to any official announcement, there are no technical details about how fast the Milton Keynes WiMax network will be, although a 2Mbit speed is a likely starting rate.

Pipex intends to roll out WiMax across eight UK cities by 2008, including large networks in London and Manchester.