Welsh hill farmers will be able to compete with London city
slickers for the price they pay for broadband communications from
next year.
This follows the
launch tomorrow of Fibrespeed, a £30m 10gbps network, to bring
low-priced voice and data broadband communications to businesses
and consumers in one of the UK's remotest areas, North Wales.
The Welsh Assembly government said it expects its £30m
investment over 15 years to boost the local economy by £29m a year
for the next 10 years.
Fibrespeed is a joint venture between the Welsh government and
network operator Geo Networks. It uses European regional
development funds. The 200-mile network will run between Holyhead
on Angelsey Island via Wrexham to connect with the UK backbone
network in Manchester.
Initially it will link 14 business parks in the area. Fibrespeed
has signed up six regional service providers to resell network
capacity, and hopes to attract another 12 this week.
Based largely on local optical fibre with long-distance
microwave connections, Fibrespeed will allow local broadband
resellers to provide services based on wave division multiplexing
and ethernet at the best London prices, or between one-half to
one-sixth of present retail costs.