Speedy and cheap UK broadband through sewers
While politicians and network providers work out how they can afford to provide the UK with a network capable of delivering super-fast broadband speeds, one company is already doing it – via the sewers. H20 networks has been in negotiations with water firms for the last five years and began rolling out its fibre-via-sewers network – known as Focus (Fibre Optical Cable Underground Sewer) in 2003. Universities in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Bournemouth are enjoying high-speed fibre connections with speeds of up to 20Gbps (gigabits per second), while council offices around the UK are also benefiting from super-fast broadband. Next month it plans to move to a new phase of its roll-out which could see it provide fibre networks to businesses and consumers around the UK.
The alternative way of laying fibre involves digging up the road which can be extremely disruptive, expensive and slow. “To roll out a networking deploying fibre over a 2km area would be six to 12 months in the planning. We can do it physically in four hours,” said Elfred Thomas, managing director of H20. There is also a huge disparity in the costs as well. “It costs between £150 and £200 per metre to dig up the roads and our costs are nowhere near that,” he said. It cost Napier University in the order of £80,000 to have a 1.2km fibre network. With a traditional fibre network these costs would have been in the region of £400,000 to £1.2m, said Mr Thomas. The other major advantage over competing systems, for instance the leased lines that BT supplies to businesses, is that the costs are not dependent on how much capacity is required. “You can have 10Mbps or 20Gbps and it costs the same,” said Mr Thomas. More details available at BBC.
Comments(55)
Is this going to be a smell free Internet service or…?
well UK’s broadband just went down the crapper…
Now all we have to worry about are the rats chewing on the fiber-optic cables…
But we can just get the ninja turtles to ask master splinter to talk to them… heh…
What about prices?
In slovenia we have FTTH 100/100 Mbps for 100€/month with unlimited traffic.
“You can have 10Mbps or 20Gbps and it costs the same,” <— Yeah RIGHT. As if my Virgin XL will go from 20Mbs to 20Gbps for the same price of £34.99, With the CAPPING from 4pm to 12pm of 512kb, would that go up to 150Mbs on the 20Gbs package !!!!
Oooo i think i can see pigs flying now. We get so ripped off here in the UK for our cable broadband.
@4
wow, that’s about double the annual salary for your average Slovenian
@5
you get everything you deserve if you choose to be a Richard Branson customer – Branson will rip you off GUARANTEED
@7
I didn’t ask Branston to buy out NTL i was on an unlimited package with no limits before they took over.!!!!
If i could get someone else to provide me with better UNLIMITED package then i would.
@8
i fully sympathise with you – i got out of my Telewest contract just in time
Also see Google TiSP: http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html
There’s something smelly in the state of the UK…
@11
The UK isn’t a state….;)
I didn’t ask Branston to buy out NTL i was on an unlimited package with no limits before they took over.!!!!
He makes nice pickle, though.
@12
Do you know from where the original quote is which I adapted for here?
Here’s a tip…Change smelly to rotten
virgin is awesome, i live in the city whilst i am at university, home is rural countryside, the boost from about 2.5mbps>20 for about the same price, but even cheaper if I remove the BT linerental costs from the equation… but this sounds good to me… as for the slovenian person, you probably live in the city, that is not avaliable in the countryside I assume, the UK is a very rural country so FTTH is not such a viable technology here.
There’s no truly unlimited non-cable broadband in the UK for a decent price anymore.
I like the fact that other countries are starting to get better internet but what the hell is up with the US? I have a 10Mbit/1Mbit connection which is a 1.25 megabyte per second download and a 125 kilobyte per second upload for $49.99. I can get 30Mbps/15Mbps (3.75 MB/s – 1.875 MB/s) for $150 which is outrageous. Countries like Sweden, Japan, and others have 100Mbit/100Mbit for the same price. WTF is up with that?
@17 – 10Mb?
Boo hoo, poor you! I’m on 1Mb at the moment, paying only slightly less than you and have download limits of 40GB/month. Gotta love the UK. Stop complaining, you’ve got it good.
http://WWW.BETHERE.CO.UK … its unlimited and 24meg for £18 plus 1meg upload… can’t say fairer than that… oh and no line ratio too… i’ve not once been bumped off for no reason!
Why not just follow the people round who are always digging up the roads and pavements for no reason.
LOL
SC
@11, everyone knows the UK is in a state.
@ EoN,
Hamlet methinks. Do I win a prize?
Anyway, hopefully this service will run like my erse after a dodgy kebab. :evil;
@6
“The Slovenian net monthly salary per person employed in companies and other organizations amounted to EUR 820,47. The average Slovenian monthly gross salary per employed person amounted to EUR 1.259,07.”
Well, you do not need to go for 100 mbps, slower speeds are:
10 Mbit/s / 10 Mbit/s for 14 €
20 Mbit/s / 20 Mbit/s for 28 €
50 Mbit/s / 50 Mbit/s for 50 €
@23
You’re asking a poor artist like me for a price when you already got the biggest price of them all…
More brains than the average ‘Is this better than Halo?’ posters…hehehehe
But you can have my kingdom for that horse you’ve got hidden away.
Btw…
Hamlet.” Act I, Scene 4: Marcellus (an officer) says “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
@24
hey, irony’s not lost on you Slovenians, is it?
I think they’ve already done this in France as to preserve the ancient streets and structures.
@17
The US dollar is not worth as much as it used to
The problem I see with this method, is that sewers can be accesseble by anything and anyone…undetected…
haha, this make me fell like an idiot for thinking my 8mb/s was fast…makes me feel like im on a 56k compared to 20Gb/s. us canadian will prob. have to wait till 2012 for speeds like that…..WE DONT EVEN HAVE TIVO YET, WHATS UP WITH THAT?????????
apperently its much more difficult to split a fibre optic cable without being noticed??? thats what i’ve heard. now we have to pay?????
the sewer routing is old news. i even remember having read about the robot that was going to do it.
This is wierd!! I thought this system is only an April fool’s joke!!! Check this out from google:
http://www.google.com/tisp/
I think they got it from google havent they!! I didnt know it is actually possible to do this.
Yes, This is the google april fools day gag, possibly the funniest thing since des o’connor stopped releasing records!
This is inferring that data carried by the lines buried in the sewers is going to be carrying s***!
This is clearly s***!
However if someone wants to give me lots of money to provide them with the sewer service I will certainly take their money and not do anything at all.
Merry Xmas
i dont get my self
i love you all
@17
The cap on speeds in the US and Canada is because of the FCC limitations.
Lol you guys get capped? Here in Australia we cant even get capped because our infrastructure is just so bad that they don’t have to.
Read that TiSP. Is that really a joke? Looks pretty funny.
“You can also choose to request our professional installation service, which dispatches an army of factory-trained, sub-contracted nanobots from the TiSP Access Node.”
Sorry, I didn’t read that part.
Hilarious.
Lucky i live in Sweden where we pay nothing for a unlimited 100mbit connection
(i do used to live in the U.K and apart from the weather and sucky internet providers it’s quite nice)
Wasn’t this the april fools prank from google?
They wont do it anytime soon… the reason they arent upgrading connections in the UK is because the telecoms companys are making too much money from copper connections… It would cost them alot of money to install fibre, but they wouldnt get any decent return from it. They want to stick to ripping ppl off.
@16 Artemus
“There’s no truly unlimited non-cable broadband in the UK for a decent price anymore.”
Erm well what about sky max? It’s what I use after I left Virgin. Up to 16Mb Unlimited (well 250 Gb) for £10 a month. Virgin Up to 20Mb (more like 5) Unlimited (very limited)for £37. Now which would you go for?
In the swedish event named dreamhack there was a broadband line in 40/gbsec say what UK
@43, your work pays for your healthcare in America, well, my dads work pays for mine over here, and i can remain a lazy student living in luxury… here is better
over here = uk
I’m moving to Sweden. I hate the US.
I’d love it if Verizon would offer FiOS in my area, but they can’t because the government won’t give them access right to the (already laid, and finished) fiber optic cable lines.
I was there when they put the things in, so I know we have the ability- right now Comcast and AT&T have a serious monoply going for Cable and DSL lines.
Comcast you get 6Mbit connection for $45 a month if you have their TV service also, $55 if you don’t.
AT&T you can get 768 DSL for $45 a month.
Thats it; sucks doesn’t it?
the net’s definitely become a sewer that’s for sure, lol…yuck…
idea for the next rlslog poll:
“what’s your download limit?”
1. lesser than 512 Kbits
2. 512 Kbits to 1 Mbits
3. 1 to 4 Mbits
4. 4 to 10 Mbits
5. 10 to 25 Mbits
6. higher than 25 Mbits
Almost enough reason to move to england
Rats arenot a problem, cables with rat poision in their cladding are standard for several years now.
The only reason why everyone and their mother is not doing it for decade is that fiber have only one enemy – water. They’re incredibly resistant to everything else (you could hang yourself on one, that’s how stress resistant they are), all it takes is one drop of water on unshielded fiber and it’s dead Jimmy.
Might take them for hours to deploy damn thing, but I bet they will laying new fiber every few months or so, as compared to never which is how frequently normal IPS have to relay their fiber.
Also, single fiber can have a bandwith of around 500GB/s, it’s all function of equipemnt you plug into it (chained 10Gb/s TDM over 50 DWDM links in this case).
But there are questions about its usage in a domestic environment, such as how do you get the cable from the sewer into the house. Would you, for instance, do it via the toilet? There are also questions about leakage
ROFL
get ready for some smelly internet experience
I wish my country had that kind of connection
we only have a 2Mbit and a 4Mbit and we do not have it cheep the 2Mbit is 20€ and the 4Mbit is 30€ and we have a limit of 100GB a month. so u guy’s be glad of what u have
What a great idea. Using pre-existing infrastructure to wire us with crazy fast internet, rather than digging up the ground and giving us this slow 5hit or faster net for a lot more.
gud ideas.