Shropshire is going superfast

Having lived and worked in Shropshire for most of my life, I am fully aware of the issues of rural connectivity. But that's changing as part of the the governments Broadband Delivery UK which aims to have 90% of the UK connected to superfast broadband by next year, and basic broadband access for everyone.

What is basic & superfast broadband?

Lets start with basic broadband. The government expect all of the UK to be able to access basic broadband from next year, this is ADSL broadband, running over the traditional copper cables that have been around for years. The problem with ADSL is that the 'data' is sent as pulses of electricity down the copper cable from the exchange to your home, the further that distance is, the weaker the signal gets. If you live far from your local exchange, you might be seeing realistic speeds of less than 1Mbps download.

Superfast broadband replaces some of the copper cable with fibre optic cable, these use pulses of light that are able to travel for longer distances without degrading, meaning you get a faster connection.

Depending on your location, and the financial and technical practicality of where your local exchange is, depends on how much of the copper network is replaced by fibre. In an ideal world we would all have FTTP (fibre to the premises) where all the street-side copper is replaced (Note that if you live/work in multi-tenancy premises, you might get FTTB - fibre to the building - with a copper connection from your individual home/office to the building's junction box) If you dont get the fibre right up to your door, youll be getting one of a number of variations on FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) where your copper connection runs from your premises to the street cabinet where it is connected to the fibre network. This is the most likely scenario for many across the country outside of the cities and big towns.

Speeds on fibre connections (depending on your ISP and the level of service you subscribe to) are typically in the region of 50Mbps, that's a bit of a finger in the air estimation as there are lots of factors to this, but it should indicate that the fibre connected speeds are significantly better than copper ADSL.

Why would I want my business on superfast broadband?

Having connection to fibre broadband is kind of like having a quick way of getting onto the motorway network... actually, that's a poor analogy for anyone living near the M54, M6 or M5 just lately, but it means that you'll be able to make use of services that would otherwise be out of reach.

It's not just 'faster internet' that fibre broadband can offer, it's opening the way to using 'The Cloud' either as an extension to your existing storage or in place of your next hardware upgrade (see my post on The Cloud) and other services, like remote logon from home (no more days lost to snow!) or video calling, it's a lot easier to explain your ideas then the person your talking to can see you.

Getting on the superfast broadband

The roll out of fibre is continuing, you can read more about it's deployment and the Superfast Shropshire and Broadband Delivery UK from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by following the links.

If you want a friendly, local IT consultant to help you get your business online, and to find out how fibre can help you and your business make use of The Cloud, contact us by email it@tinsleynet.co.uk or on any of the links below.

tinsleyNET can make sure that you and your business are getting the most from your internet connection, while protecting your data from intrusions.

IT Support for small to medium sized businesses, home office workers and home users across the West Midlands and Shropshire.

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IT Support for small to medium sized businesses, home office workers and home users across the West Midlands and Shropshire.