UPDATE2 Spectrum Internet Bring Cheap 1Gbps Broadband to Cardiff Firms

Welsh ISP Spectrum Internet claims to have launched the United Kingdom’s “first” affordable 1Gbps Ethernet broadband (1000 Megabits per second) service for small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in Cardiff (Wales), which will be priced from just £50 per month.

The provider claims that ultrafast broadband has previously been “prohibitively expensive for SMEs” (some leased lines can cost hundreds of pounds a month) and its new service, which makes use of the UK government’s £150m Urban Broadband Fund (UBF), is obviously a lot cheaper.

The product itself is expected to be available in time for the Super Connected City scheme in Cardiff on 1st August 2013, which aims to provide eligible businesses with vouchers to fund the ultrafast connection fee up the value of £3,000 (note: this is still somewhat open to change).

Giles Phelps, Managing Director of Spectrum Internet, said:

“For too long Small and Medium Enterprises have been held back from having the same opportunities as larger companies. With bandwidth usage increasing by an average of 50% each year, high speed broadband is not only desirable it is an absolute necessity for businesses.

Working with the Super Connected Cardiff scheme to connect businesses to ultrafast broadband, we will be providing small and medium sized Cardiff businesses with the means to not only maximise all of the benefits that ultrafast broadband can bring, but also to future proof their business for when their bandwidth needs increase“.

The ISP currently claims to have a presence in several telephone exchanges across Wales, which allows it to sell their own brand of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC), Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) and Wireless based broadband internet access solutions.

Unfortunately the press release is somewhat vague on precisely which technology will be used to deliver the service, what guaranteed performance levels are included, what speeds and contention you can expect for just £50 a month and whether there’s an SLA attached. We have requested more details.

Plans to launch the product in other UK cities are also under way.

UPDATE 30th July 2013:

The ISP states that its new service will be mostly delivered via their own fibre optic FTTP service for “last mile” connectivity. But for deployment internally to the building they will be using media
converters with standard Cat5e cabling and terminating with an RJ45 interface to “keep costs down and speed installation“.

A number of the more remote installations might also use their 60Ghz Wireless equipment, which claims to provide full duplex 1Gb Ethernet services.

We’ve also just asked about SLA’s and contention etc. and are awaiting a reply on that.

UPDATE2 30th July 2013

Spectrum has revealed that its 1Gbps connections will be contended, and “more than a typical ADSL broadband service“, but they state that even at contention ratios of 100:1 businesses will still pretty much be guaranteed a minimum 10Mbps service (this is why they call it a “broadband” and not “leased line” service).

A fair usage policy will also be used to keep traffic managed at a balanced level. Upgrades for better guaranteed speeds and prioritisation will be similarly available. On top of that Spectrum notes that its 1Gbps service is symmetric (same download and upload speeds).