Government confirms 10 "super-connected" cities for 2012
The Government has confirmed plans to create 10 "super-connected" cities in 2012.
Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, London, Manchester and Newcastle have been chosen as the 10 hubs for broadband investment.
As part of a £100 million investment, "ultrafast broadband" will be made available to 1.7 million households and 200,000 businesses.
These "high growth areas" will also see 3 million residents enjoy high-speed wireless broadband.
Sadly, the actual speeds associated with these terms isn't made clear, though the likes of Virgin's highest-speed fibre optic network of 100Mbit/s, already available in some areas, will surely be a benchmark.
The Government will also provide an additional £50 million to fund a second wave of ten smaller super-connected cities.
Also promisedis an extension to mobile coverage to 60,000 rural homes and along at least ten key roads by 2015.
These include the A2 and A29 in Northern Ireland, the A57, A143, A169, A352, A360 and A591 in England, the A82(T) in Scotland and the A470(T) in Wales, subject to planning permission, using the £150 million investment announced at the Autumn Statement 2011.
The Government also plans to consider whether "direct intervention is required to improve mobile coverage for rail passengers".
Comments
In market weighton my dad gets 13mbs (speedtest.net) through KC. KC is in hull! Why does he get such a good speed from a hull provider when they can't provide to hull? It's crazy. Yet 5 miles down the road, in pocklington (a much bigger town than weighton) they get less than half our speed.
I can see why the capital cities in the non-English countries would have been picked, but to not extend that to Glasgow seems odd, especially as it's the 4th biggest UK city!
Hull misses out again. I live near Hull and O2 haven't even bothered to bring 3G mobile here and if I'm lucky my BT broadband gets up to 4Mb for a couple of seconds. We are consistently overlooked in this part of the country.
Sheffield is biggere than half of the cities in that list, including Leeds, (it's England's 4th largets city), so I'm quite disturbed it's left out.
I can only hope it's in the second wave of 'smaller' cities.
It might just be me, but cities seem to be the last places "connectivity budget" should be spent, I have 50Mbit and have not yet found a site with the bandwidth to let commercial downloads approach even half that. I think it should just be spent on making the more remote areas a useable speed. Or perhaps a 4G network?