UK pilots fastest Internet connectivity

World
Europe

The first stage of a 260-million-US-dollar plan to bring the fastest broadband to businesses, schools and hospitals launched in Britain on Sunday with pilot programs in six areas.

The country's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said full fiber networks will offer connection speeds of 1,000 megabytes (1G) per second in the pilot areas.

Full fiber broadband could allow hospitals to share high definition quality graphics of medical scans in seconds to improve diagnosis speeds.

It will also enable school classrooms to see a vast increase in the number of pupils who can stream educational videos at the same time.

Test projects will go ahead in Aberdeen, West Sussex, Coventry and Warwickshire, Bristol and Bath, West Yorkshire and in Greater Manchester, said DCMS.

Each of the projects will get around 13 million US dollars of government funding to test innovative ways of connecting offices and public sector buildings with the next generation of broadband, with full fiber networks that run fiber connections straight to the doors of customers' homes or businesses.

The announcement is the first step in a four-year program unveiled by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond in his spring budget to encourage the growth of full fiber connectivity across Britain.

Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Andrew Jones said, “For our economy to thrive, it is vital we make smart investments to ensure our digital infrastructure is world class and fit for the future.”

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency