Next year has the potential to be a big year for UK broadband, with major moves from BT, Virgin Talk talk and Sky which will revolutionise communication and media industries. Comparison site Think Broadband offers its predictions for the year ahead in broadband…
BT will be investing a lot of money in deploying next-generation broadband services such as fibre-to-the-cabinet with the number of homes gaining access continuing to increase.
BT will also start deployments of full fibre-to-the-home which can deliver broadband speeds of up to 110Mbps, and will eventually reach 25 per cent coverage for this technology.
Following an increase in availability, we should see more broadband providers starting to offer fibre-based services as the current list is limited to BT and a handful of smaller providers.
Virgin having announced their 100meg service, which started rolling out late 2010, will continue deploying this to allow more people to get access to the fastest broadband possible in the UK.
They hope to have it available to the entire customer base in 2012. BT have announced trials of 1Gbps broadband, 10 times faster than current services, although we aren’t likely to see this as a product to consumers for a few years.
There are many broadband options available and this is going to continue to increase. LLU providers such as TalkTalk and Sky are continuing to increase their network coverage which in turn means that cheaper broadband will be available to more people.
Of course, cheapest doesn’t always mean best, but an increase in choice with more broadband providers at a telephone exchange does push down wholesale costs, and in turn, consumer prices.
TalkTalk are targeting 93 per cent population coverage for their own broadband network in the medium term.
The recent government broadband strategy report helps to show how the government sees broadband going forward.
It has pledged £830m to help develop our broadband services and this will include trials in rural areas to help establish how next-generation broadband can be delivered to these areas.
The ‘digital hub’ (a fibre cable) which they propose to deploy to every community should enable smaller companies and local communities to work out innovative solutions to get the best broadband they can, whether this be through a fibre-to-the-cabinet type solution, digging in your own fibre, or through wireless based access systems.
Mobile broadband will continue to evolve but we will unfortunately be playing catch-up with much of the rest of Europe and other regions in the world where faster mobile services are being installed now through a technology called LTE (Long Term Evolution).
Unfortunately the UK will have to wait till early 2014 before they can start using this technology which can give speeds of up to 100Mbps to a mobile device. The delay comes about due to hold ups in the auctioning process by Ofcom.
We should see developments before this which bring more 3G mobile broadband to the country as plans are in place to allow the older GSM frequency ranges to be used by 3G which will increase coverage and potentially mobile broadband speeds for some people.
One change in 2011 that could adapt how we watch TV is the promise of a new set-top box called YouView which will connect your broadband service to your TV and give you access to video content that has been available on the Internet for some time through your TV.
This includes the BBC iPlayer, 4oD and the other catch-up services as well as potentially new services that can be delivered over the open platform. Video services like this may be the key driver in increasing the demand for faster broadband throughout the UK.
Source: www.thinkbroadband.com