(Not-so) Superfast fibre rollout?
It seems like a lifetime ago when we were all waiting for the bleeps, whirls and crackling of our internet to dial up and be met with AOL’s famous “you’ve got mail”. And with the introduction of Broadband coming around in 2003 we were greeted with faster-than-fast internet where we would no longer have to wait for our favourite websites to load.
But it didn’t stop there. As time went on, people’s demand of the internet grew – with streaming services taking over terrestrial TV, online gaming, live streaming through social media platforms and remote working all taking a bite out of the bandwidth pie, the demand was higher than ever.
And so circa 2011 Superfast Fibre broadband was beginning to roll out to homes and business at an affordable rate. But it didn’t and is still isn’t going smoothly, especially for rural locations. With broken promises by the government, missing the target of “90 per cent of the UK by 2015” and, in one report, up to 400,000 properties not able to get fibre it’s still seems a while off until the UK catches up with the rest of the world.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. As of May 2016 the Government announced its intention to legislate for a broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO) where it would deem people to have “a legal right to request a broadband connection from a provider at a minimum speed, currently expected to be 10mbps”.
“But what’s the advantage of fibre?”
The advantage of fibre internet is having that consistency and speed that is required of a business. With a fibre connection you could improve efficiency over conventional broadband services. This in turn could save the business money and offer a lot more services that would currently be unavailable i.e. video conferencing, VOIP systems, and cloud based working.
“Won’t it be really expensive?”
Fibre prices have dropped dramatically over the last few years and are now matching (or even beating) prices of conventional broadband. Your ISP would provide you with the hardware needed but if you do need any questions answered get in touch with one of our engineers.
So if you haven’t got Fibre yet, why not enquire with you ISP if you’re able to get it? Failing that, give us a call to discuss options on improving your broadband speeds.
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