Broadband speeds in the UK currently max out at about 300 Mbps, provided by British Telecom. Sky and TalkTalk have now announced that they intend to bring 1 Gbps speeds to UK cities. The roll-out will begin in York next year, before moving to other locations.
Working with CityFibre, Sky and TalkTalk have created a new company that will build the infrastructure for providing ultra-fast broadband. The new venture is aiming to create a "state of the art, city-wide, pure fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network." Once the network is built, Sky and TalkTalk will retail competing services over the infrastructure.
At 1 Gbps per second, the services will be significantly faster than the fastest fiber optic speeds available in the UK today and will match those offered by Google Fiber in the US. Sky says that the fiber optic roll-out in York will be the first time that ultra-fast broadband has been deployed in the UK on a city-wide basis. Fujitsu will be employed to deploy the network.
"This announcement makes York the digital infrastructure capital of the UK," said James Alexander, leader of the City of York council. "Gaining ultra fast broadband across the city is a huge boost for our economy, providing significant new opportunities for businesses based here and better quality and value to our residents."
The services are expected to go live in York from 2015, with a subsequent roll-out planned for two more, yet to be named, cities.
