WightFibre to Boost Isle of Wight Broadband Speeds up to 152Mbps

WightFibre, which operates a cable broadband, TV and phone network on the Isle of Wight just off the central south coast of England (Hampshire), has announced that customers of their top 120Mbps (Megabits per second) package will be given yet another free speed boost to 152Mbps from October 2014.

The move will mean that WightFibre has matched the best speeds being offered by Virgin Media, their mainland cable equivalent, and will be almost double the top speed of BT’s ‘up to’ 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) product. It comes as the operator reveals that the volume of Internet traffic gobbled by WF’s customers at peak times has grown 200%+ in the last two years.

John Irvine, WightFibre’s CEO, said:

“As people connect more things to the Internet more often – TVs, tablets, smartphones and laptops, all at the same time – they need powerful broadband with the bandwidth to deliver a great experience for everyone in the home.

The volume of Internet traffic enjoyed by WightFibre customers at peak times has already grown 50% in the past nine months and over 200% since the company re-launched as WightFibre in July 2012. These are much higher than national averages showing the WightFibre network is capable of delivering greater performance that other providers who are reliant on BT’s network.

WightFibre’s network operates completely independently of BT. Our top speed is now twice as fast as BT, Sky, TalkTalk and all the others reliant on BT’s older infrastructure as we extend our lead as the Isle of Wight’s fastest broadband provider.”

Apparently independent speed tests conducted by Ookla via IsleofWightSpeedTest.com also found that BT’s average broadband performance on the Island were 14.18Mbps, which compares with 28.49Mbps from WightFibre. However it’s unclear how many tests were performed for each and over what time period(s).

BT is currently working to roll-out superfast broadband speeds (24Mbps+) on the island through the government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) framework. But WightFibre has long proposed to make their faster services available to island residents “years ahead of BT” and without council funding (here). Despite this commitment the local authority still chose to go with BT.