A fibre city?

I don’t want this blog to become a rant against BT but to back up my opinion further down the page as to why BT wont deliver on the fibre network you only have to look at the newest player to the market, H2O networks. They have launched in conjunction with city councils plans to make Bournemouth the first UK fibre city though a business called Fibrecity. Every house (with home owners permission) will be connected up for free to a true fibre network which will be delivered through the existing sewer network.

Unlike companies like Virgin who say they have a fibre network but actually deliver coax cable to the door – this network promises to be truly fibre all the way to your home. The reason why I think this has more hope of succeeding than BTs woeful PR releases and Virgin’s cable, sorry ‘fibre’ network? Because these guys are not dealing with existing infrastructure and so don’t need to keep existing services live or use routes dictated by their network. They can make the most of existing large pipes which exist all over the UK to run the tiny fibre cables so it doesn’t mean much disruption on the roads either.

Their biggest problem? Well apart from the obvious finance which I think must still be an issue, I did speak to one guy there who said the fibre line being punctured was a technical challenge they had to overcome. I just wasn’t aware the sewers were awash with so many hypodermic needles but apparently they are and so steel shielded cables are required to ensure everything continues to work.

We have been looking at this technology for a while with regards to Fluidata as we believe some of our clients could benefit – I’ll let you know how we get on.

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