Virgin Media maybe set to offer customers 100Mbps broadband, but if you’re living in a remote village, there’s no guarantee anyone will come to rip up the road and install that lovely fibre optic for you. That could change though if an old school new trial takes off: Virgin Media is testing out running the cables through telegraph poles instead!
In a trial set to run for six month, Virgin Media has hooked up the Berkshire village of Woolhampton with 50Mbps broadband by stringing up the cables to telegraph poles. In contrast, the government is only aiming for nationwide minimum speeds of 2Mbps, as outlined in the Digital Britain report.
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If the test is successful, Virgin Media may have just come up with a way to connect rural communities to high speed broadband without the cost of extensive roadworks and underground cables.
Virgin Media estimates that a further 1 million homes could be viably added to the fibre optic network this way, so we’ve got our fingers crossed the scheme is a smash.
Out TBC | £TBC | Virgin Media (Via New York Times) (Photo via myrrh.ahn)
