Plans revealed to deliver fibre to UK town by autumn 08

January 24, 2008 – UK fibre firm H20 has revealed plans to deliver fibre-based super-fast Internet connections to consumers’ homes in a UK town by this autumn.

The service will be offered first to Bournemouth, Northampton or Dundee, and will deliver speeds of up to 100Mbps.  Roll-out in the chosen town will begin in September and take over 18 months to complete.  The fibre cables will be run through the town’s sewer system, circumventing the need for expensive and time-consuming roadworks.

“While deploying traditional fibre over a two-kilometre area would be six to 12 months in the planning, we can do it in four hours,” said Elfed Thomas, Managing Director of H2O.  “An average town of 75,000 homes would cost someone deploying traditional fibre between £50mn and £70mn.  We can do it for 20 to 30% of that.”

The service will be delivered to individual homes via a four-inch box attached to the house.  H20 reports that it is “advanced talks” with media partners and Internet service providers which plan to offer the service to customers, and Mr. Thomas hopes to add another 14 towns over the next five years.

The advent of 100Mbps Internet connections in the UK could facilitate a range of new consumer applications, such as on-demand high-definition TV, DVD quality film downloads in minutes, online video messaging and HD gaming services, in addition to super-fast web surfing.