WightFibre Boosts Broadband Network Capacity on the UK Isle of Wight

Cable operator WightFibre, which serves homes and businesses on the Isle of Wight (an island just off the south coast in Hampshire, England) with TV and broadband speeds of up to 152Mbps, has announced the completion of a major network upgrade that has “increased capacity 32 times over“.

The upgrade affected Wight Fibre’s core street fibre optic network, which also involved the installation of additional lasers and multiplexing technologies in order to deliver enough additional network capacity to “see us through the next 5 years.”

A 32x increase might sound like “more than enough” and it should be for the medium-term, although WightFibre notes that the huge rise in online video and TV content streaming has seen usage on their network “grow 16 times over” during the past 4 years.

WightFibre Statement

“Over the summer our engineers have been hard at work implementing a substantial upgrade to our fibre network on the island. In the last 4 years usage on our network has grown 16 times over, due mainly to the advent of smart TVs and On Demand video services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Sky’s Now TV.

The growing use of on demand services from the main stream providers such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 and Channel 5 and our own YouView TV platform have created further demand. Think of how rarely you now watch live TV and you’ll get the picture.

What does this mean to our customers? It means, with SO much capacity in the network, we can maintain our promise of never deliberately slowing you down because there is more than enough bandwidth to go around.”

The upgrade will also help to support WightFibre’s tentative plan to roll-out a new 1000Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH/P) broadband network on the island. An early trial has already begun and ISPreview.co.uk was recently informed that the commercial roll-out would begin in 2018 and run until 2020. The exact plan has yet to be confirmed.