Fujitsu Launched Fibre to the Home Project For Rural Britain

Britain's rural internet access is changing as Fujitsu unveiled plans to build a superfast fibre optic, Fibre to the Home (FTTH) broadband network for approximately 5 millions homes in rural Britain. According to Fujitsu, they have partnered with Cisco, the network solutions provider, Virgin Media and Talk Talk two of the UKs broadband retailers, to provide residents with the service.

The UK government has earmarked a total of £530 million for the provision of better internet access for homes and businesses that are not located in densely populated areas where the internet speed is close to that of dial-up. According to the Communication Minister Ed Vaizey, they have set aside the money for projects like these and that “The whole of the UK should be able to share in the benefits of broadband and we are determined to make that happen by the end of the Parliament. Creating this superfast broadband network will help improve the economic and social prospects of the homes and businesses where high-speed internet access remains just a dream.”

The UK logs behind many of the developed world when it comes to providing its population with broadband speed that is comparable with other developed countries. Last month South Korea announced they were piloting the roll out of 1Gigabit broadband connection for each household in the country.  Broadband speed at that rate means that they are on average 166 times faster than what we have in the UK.

In this project the collaboration partners Virgin Media,Talk Talk and others will access wholesale products via the Fujitsu network in order to retail the service to customers in remote parts of the UK. The plans rely on the remedy imposed by the UK telecom regulator Ofcom, on BT Openreach, to provide access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

We are yet to get a response from BT, not regarding the Fujitsu plans but where it is with their roll put programme. Last year BT said they have committed and extra £1 billion to a previous investment of £1.5 billion to bring super-fast broadband to UK homes. At the time they said by 2012 40 percent of the UK should have access to ultra-broadband.

Fujitsu hopes to achieve the following from network roll out:

• In the vast majority of areas, Fujitsu will run fibre optic cabling directly to the home, rather than to the local street cabinet, with speed of up to 1 Gigabit per second with the potential to go to 10 Gbps.
• An open network so that all ISPs will have access to offer end customer and unrivalled choice of services.
• A speed that will allow entertainment, remote healthcare, education and government services.