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French company chosen to develop 50Mb broadband network
(24-12-07) - A French company has been chosen to provide a fibre broadband network to 600,000 homes in South Yorkshire, in a project that could precede a nationwide next generation fibre network.
Next generation broadband has been the talk of 2007, with Government ministers keen to keep up with neighbouring countries by developing ever faster broadband connections.
Now Thales, a French defence and engineering group has been chosen to oversee a project that will match the speeds of up to 50Mb currently on trial by Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com).
The project will involve replacing the old copper wires used by ADSL providers with much faster fibre optic cable - currently deemed too expensive to do on a national basis.
Top speeds offered over the UK’s old copper wire network currently stand at up to 24Mb, by Be Broadband (www.BeThere.co.uk) and BT (www.BT.com), the country’s incumbent operator only offers speeds of up to 8Mb - though in reality the speeds achieved by customers fall far below these.
In contrast, France Telecom is currently trialling speeds of up to 100Mb. Thales saw off competition from 70 other rivals, including BT, to be the preferred bidder, reported http://www.timesonline.co.uk/.
Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “Ministers have been keen to start developing a next generation broadband network before the UK falls too far behind neighbouring countries and Japan and the US. However, there has been much debate over who will foot the bill - the cost of which could exceed £10 billion.
“Ministers, the industry and the public alike will be keeping a close eye on the progress of this project and the kind of speeds it actually manages to deliver. If it goes well, it could take the UK one step closer to the kind of 100Mb connections already enjoyed elsewhere,” he said.
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