I’m kinda lucky at home. I’ve got 300Mbps broadband from Virgin Media, but although it’s marketed as “fibre broadband” it – and many other “superfast fibre” connections – actually aren’t delivered via fibre all the way. Instead, the last bit, from the local street cabinet to your house, is via some sort of coaxial cable or twisted copper. This hampers the speed somewhat, and that lightning-fast fibre connection effectively slows down as it’s funnelled into your house.
Fibre To The Premises – FTTP – is the answer. Usually though, this is expensive and you’ll only get a few of the big players like BT or Virgin Business offering it and usually it’s only businesses that demand it. However, now Vodafone have thrown their hat into the ring, and they’re aiming at homes and families.
Vodafone have just started delivering Gigabit speeds to 50 customer homes in Milton Keynes. It marks the start of testing for the network, with a wider roll-out planned soon. The delivery is pure fibre optic throughout the entire journey. This cranks up the speed drastically, and means that your humble house gets the same internet connection as our main Coolsmartphone server.
Micaela Perez Amaro, a dance instructor and mother of two, said..
Before we started using Vodafone Gigafast Broadband, I couldn’t work from home. There’s no reliable broadband where I live in Milton Keynes, so every time I wanted to send a video to a student, I had to drive to a relative’s house in London to use their broadband.
When you think about it, laying fibre optic cables in these more modern narrow trenches is beneficial for mobile networks. They can extend their backbone for their mobile masts and deliver incredibly speedy home internet speeds too.
Although not widely available just yet, Vodafone have a plan to make Vodafone Gigafast Broadband available on a mass scale, reaching a million UK homes by 2021.