As promised Xwavia (formerly eXwavia), fresh from its somewhat controversial injection of new investment by the Welsh Government (here), has confirmed the deployment of its 10-100Mbps capable wireless broadband network into the market town of Conwy on the north coast of Wales.
The ISP claims that Conwy has some of the slowest internet connections in the United Kingdom, with services at Erw Fawr in Henryd crawling along with average download speeds of around 0.6Mbps (Megabits per second). By contrast local homes and businesses should now be able to receive between 10Mbps and up to 100Mbps.
As we’ve mentioned before, parts of Conwy are already expected to be covered by the state aid supported Superfast Cymru project with BT (here), although it will also be “one of the last areas in Wales” scheduled to receive superfast broadband under that project.
The ISPs effort intends to make use of the Welsh Government‘s revised Access Broadband Cymru (ABC) scheme, which provides grants worth up to £1,000 per premise in areas which have “slow broadband connections” (i.e. sub-2Mbps). It’s worth pointing out that ABC and the Superfast Cymru project are not supposed to conflict (i.e. to avoid duplication of the public investment).
Xwavias Statement:
“We are thrilled to announce that superfast broadband will be now be available to residents and businesses in Conwy for the first time, as of this month.
Currently, many residents and business-owners in Conwy do not have access high speed broadband and this is negatively effecting the local economy. We are therefore extending our service to ensure that individuals and businesses are given access to the broadband services they need and deserved.”
The plan to deploy into Conwy was first revealed last month, although it’s not currently known where Xwavia intends to go next. Unfortunately the ISP has also stopped mentioning their full package details and prices, although it is known that their entry-level 5Mbps option on an 18 month contract costs from £16.99 per month. Meanwhile the setup cost is likely to be positioned to take full advantage of the ABC scheme.
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…. short on technology, so assume this is 2.4GHz wifi access with 5.8GHz backhau;, so while they can do 150Mbps HDD into an Access Point, share that ten times leaves only 15Mbps per premise – not quite superfast.
LOL OMG Maths and understanding the tech fail!
I had thought that the transmitters can manage 300Mbps.
Done right – as in: enough transmitters and repeaters – and every home could expect superfast speeds most or all the time. Virgin, for instance, don’t provision bandwidth at 1:1 and yet they’re the fastest provider by a very long way almost no matter where you live. Just as long as it’s a cabled area. They do not have the “last mile” distribution problem.
Problem comes with the number of transmitters/repeaters required in order to hit the appropriate contention level bearing in mind that in years to come, it won’t be that unusual for the load on the thing to ramp up to the max at around 7pm as people start watching streamed TV. Take that forward not too many years and with say 75% of the premises using 30Meg+ streams at the same time wireless will struggle unless the contention ratio is very low.
You could contrast wireless versus VDSL deployment round here – do wireless right and it will bring superfast to everyone right now. On the other hand no matter what you do with VDSL not everyone will get anything like superfast speeds.
Until the investment is found to run fibre solutions it’s a case of the best tech match for the area. CityFibre are making the right noises, but at the moment, it remains to be seen whether they are simply “noises”.
Not to mention his “150Mbps HDD into an Access Point, share that ten times leaves only 15Mbps per premise – not quite superfast.”
Even if it were 150Mb max he fails as he is assuming the 10 people connected to the access point are all busily maxing their 15Mbps at exactly the same time, every second they are connected.
It sounds like some of the the comedy crap another individual comes up with on here. While at the same time thinking a certainly monopoly is different in regards to congestion.