We’ve had access to 50 Mbps in the UK for some time now; it’s about the fastest line you’ll be able to find outside of making special arrangements or having your own community network set up. It’s not exactly widely available though, only certain areas can pick up a 50 Mbps from Virgin even if their area is connected by the company at all; the Virgin Network currently only handles about half the country.
However, the company is now bringing the service to rural Wales for the first time ever. Rather than digging up the ground and placing fibre optic cable, Virgin is instead providing citizens access to the line by using the existing infrastructure of electricity poles. Currently only a single village, Crumlin, will be enjoying the service, which can pick up both 50 Mbps services as well as the Virgin Media cable TV service.
The trial is due to begin next month and will run for the rest of the year unless problems arise.
Executive Director of Broadband at Virgin Media, Jon James commented:
“We’re already bringing broadband speeds of up to 50Mb and, soon 100Mb, to over half of all UK homes and are pushing the boundaries to ensure that homes right across the UK benefit from ultra fast broadband.
Working in partnership with companies like Surf Telecoms, we can more rapidly and efficiently expand the reach of fibre optic networks to towns, villages and communities right across the UK.”
Putting the cables overhead has it’s own problems such as making the service much more susceptible to bad weather, but it does save the massive cost of having to dig up land to plant the cables, which can cost millions of pounds and take a very long time to complete, which is why cable is never available in rural areas, who usually have to rely on low speed ADSL connections or internet without phone line services such as mobile broadband.