A £132m Next Generation Broadband project is set to give Cornwall optical fibre connectivity to individual businesses and households. The programme will ensure every part of Cornwall – already benefiting from extensive broadband coverage – will have massive online capacity and reliable connections.
This is set to act as a further stimulus to many of the industries already clustered here in Cornwall – ICT, creative businesses, aerospace and renewable technology in particular. It will ensure Cornish based operations can link anywhere in the world with high quality videoconferencing and make sharing large files (such as multimedia, applications, or high resolution technical designs) simple.
Of course, it’s no surprise that Cornwall should be taking the lead in this area: the county was where Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio signal back in 1901.
Rollout of the next generation network has begun, and by 2014 around 50% of businesses will have fibre optic cables offering speeds of 100Mbps directly linked to their premises. Even those without dedicated fibre will benefit from the trans-Cornwall infrastructure, seeing speeds of up to 20-40Mb – compared to the 8mb that is standard on UK networks.
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Read more about the Next Generation Broadband project