Fibre Optic ISP Hyperoptic Trial Crazy Fast 10Gbps Home Broadband

City focused fibre optic UK ISP Hyperoptic, which claims to be the United Kingdom’s largest residential provider of Gigabit broadband connections (FTTP/B), have carried out a trial of the “fastest home broadband the country has ever seen” by testing a 10Gbps service at East Village (the London 2012 Athletes’ Village).

The connection was delivered to a home using the provider’s existing “full fibre” network and not a new dedicated line, which makes it sound similar to Gigaclear’s 2015 trial of a 5Gbps (Gigabits per second) capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H) broadband network (here); albeit much faster.

The deployment reflects Hyperoptic’s typical approach, which focuses on connecting their Fibre-to-the-Building / Premises (FTTB/P) network to large residential (i.e. Multi-Dwelling Units with at least 50 units) and office buildings in dense urban areas. Using this approach the ISP has covered 400,000 premises and this should reach 500,000 by 2019, followed by 2 million in 2022 and there’s also an aspiration for 5 million by 2025 (here).

The trial was carried out with the UK’s Build to Rent pioneer, Get Living, who own and manage 1,500 homes for rent at East Village, on the doorstep of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London. Since the neighbourhood opened its doors in 2013, Hyperoptic has supplied its residents with 1Gbps capable connections but the trial shows its network is able to go much, much faster.

Dana Tobak, CEO of Hyperoptic, said:

“We have carried out this trial to elevate the debate in a largely stagnate industry. While the market incumbents focus on sweating their copper assets and lobbying the likes of the ASA to convince them that its acceptable to market their Fibre-to-the-Cabinet services as ‘fibre,’ we are proudly setting a new standard.

With full fibre our customers across 30 UK towns and cities can enjoy symmetrical gigabit services today. This 10Gb test proves that our network can scale in the future.”

Sharon White, Ofcom CEO, added:

“The amount of internet data used by people in the UK is growing by around half every year. So we’ll increasingly need full-fibre broadband services like this to provide faster, more reliable connections and capacity to our homes and offices. We’re seeing real momentum behind full-fibre, with bigger and bolder commitments from companies of all sizes to build broadband that can support the UK’s digital future.”

Hyperoptic has informed ISPreview.co.uk that their trial used a single thread of single mode fibre with a bidirectional 10G SFP+ transceiver, while the layer 2 technology was 10G Ethernet instead of PON (Passive Optical Networks). 

We should point out that the trial was measured via a speedtest server located in Hyperoptic’s own Data Centre, which used the latest 10Gbps network capable router with the LAN host and server being based on Intel technology, which allows network speeds up to 10Gb or more. The test environment will be in place for 4 weeks.

Obviously this is perhaps not the most impartial of speedtests but then testing a 10Gbps link via ordinary internet speedtests might be difficult as many of them cannot yet support that kind of performance, at least not accurately.

The trial once again helps to prove just how future proof pure fibre optic lines are, although at the same time this is largely about marketing because no residential users actually “need” a 10Gbps connection yet, let alone 5Gbps or even 1Gbps.

Likewise most computers or home wireless routers would struggle to work with a connection that fast, while the bulk of internet content providers and servers wouldn’t even be able to remotely harness the full speed. As a side note we should mention that some ISPs, such as B4RN, are already building fibre optic networks that could deliver 10Gbps speeds today if it were really needed (backhaul allowing).

However it’s nice to know that the capability exists for when that day eventually comes, even though we’re still a long way away from such a moment. Full fibre networks can take many years to deploy and so it’s often better to get started long before you need such speeds.