City’s broadband first launches today

Today’s the day that Manchester gets another digital first for the UK with the official launch of Corridor Manchester.
The Oxford Road area is Britain’s first to pilot Next Generation Broadband as part of a £500,000 project funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency.
Organisers have high hopes that the project will open up a whole new range of opportunities for digital communications across business, social and healthcare sectors.
Corridor Manchester chief executive Jackie Potter said: “One of the key aims for Corridor Manchester is to drive economic growth in the Oxford Road area of the city. By providing high speed broadband we can not only help the universities, schools and hospital network enhance their services but also attract new businesses to the city.”
Next Generation Broadband is delivered through fibre optic cables (as opposed to traditional copper telephone lines) directly into buildings. This is often described as fibre to the premises (FTTP).
Few people have access to broadband at speeds more than 4Mbs (Mega-bits per second) and the speed varies on how many people are using it, the more people, the slower it runs.
By investing in the high speed fibre optics the aim is to ensure that the standard speed will be 100 Mbs, no matter how many people are using it.
The project is the first phase in the planned digital infrastructure for the city, it will directly connect 500 businesses and 1000 homes in the Oxford Road area with fibre optic lines which will increase broadband speeds by up to 100 times than they are now.
Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese, said: “Even at this time of economic downturn Manchester has ambitious plans for its knowledge economy. We are committed to delivering Digital Britain and next generation broadband, and this new advanced infrastructure will help create exciting innovative new applications for the Internet which will benefit our residents and businesses.”
It is being co-ordinated by Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA).
Head, David Carter said: “For Manchester to keep its competitive edge on the national and global stage, we need an effective high speed broadband infrastructure. We cannot wait for the market providers to do this for us – it’s a bit like public transport, private operators don’t build new train lines or tram tracks – we need to provide the core infrastructure on which they can build. This will be an open access network available to all service providers.”
While the fibre is being installed, MDDA will set up working groups from across housing, business, healthcare and creative sectors to assess and develop uses for the technology.
There’s more details about possible uses of the technology and further information at the MDDA website here.
Image provided by Ove Arup and Partners.