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Hold on to your hats everyone, we have liftoff. British Telecom’s just unveiled a proof-of-concept network, here in the sunny UK no less, that’s running at 10Gbps. Yeah, that’s right. Broadband at 10 freaking gigabits per second — internet so fast it’s just plain pointless.
At the moment, the hyper-speeds are being reserved for just one company, engineering firm Arcol UK in Cornwall. The lucky buggers have a direct fibre link to the BT exchange in Truro; though it’s claimed as 10Gbps internet, the only actual component that runs at that speed is the aforementioned fibre link — the rest of the world wide web can’t quite cope with these sorts of speeds yet. Still, I bet they’re still pretty chuffed with their Speedtest results — especially considering they changed to this from a shared 1.5Mpbs line.
The network actually doesn’t require the several thousand tonnes of fibre-optic you might expect; it’s just boxes added on at either end of the cable. Excitingly, then, anyone on the BT fibre network should theoretically be able to get these speeds at some point in the future. So, if you’ve ever had the desire to stream every episode of Friends ever made, in HD, simeltaneously, your time may be coming. For everyone else, what would you do with 10Gbps broadband? [BT]
Image credit: Speedometer from Shutterstock
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If this comes to everyone in the near future, gaming devices will benefit massively, being able to download a full game in less than a minute, 4K 3D Streaming.
I can only dream, but for now stuck on – 8Mbps.
Infinity is not Bad; when it works, Mr Joe.
Fiber optics? In my parts? never going to happen.
FO’s in my area only got rolled out about a 6 months later than scheduled on the BT Infinity roll-out webpage. It takes one to get the installation. The rest will follow.
I don’t think it will be feasible for BT or Virgin to install fiber optics on my estate, the nearest stock exchange is about 10 8 – 10 miles away, we get around 1Mbps if we where wired up to that, but we are on RedRaw wireless internet, basically 3.5G but the connection tower is only a few 100 meters away so it’s not too bad but the whole estate of around 200 houses are connected to this one base station at once.
It’s livable, I can download an album in around 10 mins, and a movie in around an hour, streaming is hit and miss, have to go on the SD streaming if I want instant.
Nearest Stock Exchange?
Phone exchange, haha Stock Exchange! What am I like.
FO has been rolled out in my area since March this year but BT still doesn’t offer infinity.
And now can we get back to enabling the rest of the UK for Infinity or even reliable broadband.
Exactly, boasting about speeds in individual locations is fine, but least get the rest of the UK up to a high speed standard.
You may not have noticed but thats pretty much what they’ve been doing for the last few years and are continuing to do until at least 2014.
Pretty much the same as with 3G. Who cares about 4G if I can only get edge in certain places?!
I’d be happy if I could even get ANY mobile signal in my house. Pain in the backside having to go into the garden just to send a text.
I know of one of the major mobile operators that sells a £50 box that turns your broadband into a mini mobile cell site. You tell it what phone numbers can use it and hey-presto it’s like you’ve got normal mobile coverage. Might be worth investigating.
That’s Vodafone.
Not the same but if you’ve a smartphone theres a BT app BT Smart Talk that lets you use any wireless connection as a route to calls at your landline contract rates
Chris, nitpicking I know but….
They went from 1.5Mbps to 330Mbps, the 10Gbps test connection just piggybacks the same piece of fibre. Only a 3,000% increase instead of ~666,666%
So heres me still on 3.5Mbps while certain cities get faster and faster. As Michael Pegg says get the rest of the UK upto speed!
agreed.. but when BT want to dig things up to run FO to the country these green folk tend to get a bit pissed off about it..
Also there are greenbelts that prevent metal pylons being used so they need to use little wood ones and so on.. its all a big stack of redtape that stops BT rolling out FO.
More that fibre over pylons doesn’t really work too well and digging up roads first pisses off councils and secondly costs a ridiculous amount of money.
BT should of prepared long time ago instead of plebbing along earning lots of money.
It’s FTTH, or business in this case, there’s nothing new or interesting about 10Gbps fibre connections this one’s just wired into the internet at the local exchange.
Once you’ve got a fibre connection the possibilities are effectively endless, I mean current records sit at 160Gbps per colour/wavelength of which there are over 1000 colours already, it’ just a case of what boxes you’ve got at the end.
Until we get fibre to people’s homes this means nothing as that’s where the real cost is.
You can loop fibre around the neutral line of overhead power lines without any effect so the infrastructure is all in place. You could do the country in a couple of years if you pulled your finger out. Just sayin.