London’s Broadband Connectivity Rating Scheme Goes LIVE

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and WiredScore have this week introduced a new “Connectivity Ratings Scheme,” which awards big buildings in the city with a rating of either Platinum, Gold, Silver or Certified (aka – Bronze) depending upon the quality of its broadband and Internet connectivity.

The scheme, which was first announced over a year ago (here) and then again this year (here), is designed to help encourage developers and building owners to improve their connectivity by giving businesses information about a property’s Internet capabilities.

As part of this effort property managers can also receive a technical engineers assessment, which will examine the buildings connectivity and then advise on improvements and or provide a rating (this process normally takes between 45 to 60 days and the certification then lasts for 2 years). After that the rating is listed on a searchable property directory.

Rating Definitions

Platinum – Best in class connectivity
Gold – Reliable, diverse internet connectivity
Silver – Meets needs of most commercial tenants
Certified – Meets minimum standards

The scheme and searchable map can be viewed on a special website (http://wiredscore.london/), but at present there are only a few entries. On top of that some of the information provided is quite vague, for example it mentions the possible connectivity types but not the likely service speeds.

On top of that the scheme is voluntary, so you might well imagine that those buildings with poor connectivity may simply elect not to conduct the survey. Similarly it currently only extends to commercial office and industrial buildings, which won’t help residential Multi-Dwelling Units (MDU).

The definitions for the ratings themselves are also very vague and after hunting around we couldn’t find a more detailed description. In particular the bottom “Certified” (Bronze) rank talks about meeting “minimum standards“, but sadly we couldn’t find a useful explanation of what that actually means (e.g. how many Megabits per second would be deemed acceptable?).

All of this forms part of the Mayor’s wider London Infrastructure Plan 2050, which seeks to ensure that 99% of properties in the capital will have access to affordable superfast connections by 2018 and hopes to push 5G mobile out into the wild by 2020 (assuming the kit is even ready by then). Both Virgin Media and BT seem to be the main contributors to this with their respective commercial network expansions, although some smaller ISPs like Hyperoptic are also having an impact.