City of London to Help 12 Housing Estates Get 1Gbps Fibre Optic Broadband

The City of London Corporation (CoLC) has today announced that some 7,500+ residents in 12 central London housing estates will in the near future gain “affordable” access to ultrafast fibre optic broadband speeds, which is provided they can attract some viable bids from ISPs.

Sadly Central London does still have a few patches of poor connectivity and in keeping with that you can also find a few of those nasty Exchange Only Lines (EOL) floating around the area, although the coverage of “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) has improved a lot in recent years.

The CoLC has already spearheaded a number of initiatives to help tackle the problem (example) and their latest plan will see Gigabit capable fibre optic cables being extended to reach into the Corporation’s social housing estates, which stretch across seven London boroughs including the City of London, Hackney, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark and Tower Hamlets.

CoLC housing estates in the “Superfast City” scheme:

Avondale Square Estate

Golden Lane Estate

Holloway Estate

Horace Jones Hones

Isleden House

Southwark Estates

Sydenham Hill Estates

Dron House

Middlesex St Estate

William Blake Estate

Windsor House Estate

York Way Estate

At present the CoLC claims to provide housing for Londoners in 3,000 residential properties and they’re building another 3,700 homes by 2025. Admittedly this won’t make much of a dent in the overall picture, but at least it’s an improvement.

Neal Hounsell, Acting Director of CoLC’s Community & Children’s Services, said:

“We are responding to the need to provide faster internet access to Londoners at an affordable price.

This project will mean that our housing developments in central London are better connected with faster broadband speeds.”

Apparently up to 5 ISPs per estate will be invited to bid on related deployment contracts and the winners will be “selected based on affordability and quality of service.” The winning providers will also be expected to offer “reduced payment options for residents on low incomes and benefits,” which might make it harder for some to build a viable economic model.

On the other hand a few providers, such as Hyperoptic, have previously offered special reduced speed / cost services at some of their other developments around the city. Much will of course depend upon the contract detail and how much funding, if any, is on offer to help deliver the new network.