South Yorkshire set to become broadband capital of the world
mardi, 17 novembre 2009
According to Lowry Stanage, Digital Region’s new deputy chairman, the roll out will see the UK catch up and overtake other global operators by offering guaranteed speeds of 25Mb/s per second and beyond.
The country’s average broadband connection is currently less than four Mb/s.
Mr Stanage, who was previously in charge of BT’s global network operations, said he was all too aware of how slow the UK had been to roll out internet technology but that the Digital Region project would change all that.
Mr Stanage said: "South Yorkshire will be ahead of the rest of the world. Most of the other (global) operators are rolling it out conventionally, to the big cities where it's most commercially sensible. What we're doing is rolling it out for the whole community.
"There's no doubt this technology will sweep across all the developing countries eventually, but it will be the Londons, the Manchesters, the Birminghams that get it first. South Yorkshire is breaking the mould."
Mr Lowry said the whole idea of Digital Region was to act as an “enabler” of economic growth in the same way as good road and airports.
"The whole idea of Digital Region is to act as an enabler of economic growth, in the same way good roads or airports do.
He added: "I would say increasingly no home is going to be complete without high-speed access. I think in a few years we will be talking about 70 to 80%of premises having that sort of connectivity.”
Digital Region is wholly owned by regional development agency by Yorkshire Forward and the four local authorities of South Yorkshire.
The infrastructure roll-out is being headed by Thales UK, which is leading a consortium that includes Alcatel-Lucent and Hull-based KCOM.
Work on the infrastructure began in June with the first homes being able to take up the service by 2010. The vast majority of the network will be completed within three years.