Northern Island put UK Minimum Speed to Shame

The Northern Island Executive have announced a similar Universal Service Obligation to the one announced by the UK government in 2012. Well, it?s similar in that the timeframe is the same and objectives are similar, but Northern Island are promising 10 Mbps for urban areas, while continuing to honour the 2 Mbps in my rural areas.

The project has a lot of BT investment involved ? the company are throwing ?30 million in while another ?18 million is being funded by the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment. BT will be deploying FTTC cable technology to businesses who can expect speeds of around 40 Mbps. Upstream speeds will range from 2 Mbps to 15 Mbps.

Arlene Foster, Enterprise Minister said:

?Following a competitive tender exercise, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment has entered into a contract with BT for further development of Northern Ireland?s telecommunications infrastructure, specifically the provision of Next Generation Broadband Services.?

?All of the technologies to be used will be fixed line with fibre being the predominant solution. There are few, if any, parts of the British Isles which will have anywhere near the amount of fibre that is going to be deployed in Northern Ireland, particularly in our rural areas.?

Along with rolling out new cable there will also be equipment upgrades in 166 exchanges across the country.

Northern Island has some of the slowest overall speeds across the entire UK, so it?s good to see some extra investment being thrown into bringing speeds up to scratch and the promise of a 10 Mbps service for urban areas puts the government 2 Mbps offering to shame.

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