100Mb/sec broadband rollout begins

 

Gallery

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 23 Jul 2008 at 15:53

H2O has begun sending out letters to Bournemouth residents requesting permission to connect them to its superfast 100Mb/sec broadband network.

The company chose Bournemouth back in May as the testbed for its technology, which runs fibre cabling through sewer networks, avoiding much of the usual chaos and cost associated with digging up new roads to lay cable.

The company has sent out letters to around 88,000 homes and businesses in the area, and once residents accept they will be eligible to begin receiving service offers from ISPs, though pricing has yet to be confirmed.

Work is scheduled to begin in September and run for 18 months at an estimated cost of £30 million, with 55,000 homes in Dundee set to follow suit within the next six months.

"This is just the start of bringing next-generation connectivity to the UK," says Elfed Thomas, CEO of H2O Networks. "We will be announcing more towns and cities which will benefit from Fibrecity over the coming months, and plan to have a nationwide network deployed over the next few years."