6G Internet’s 100Mbps Wireless Broadband Extends to Burnley
Fixed wireless UK ISP 6G Internet (IX Wireless) has announced that their 100Mbps capable “Air Fibre” broadband network is now rolling out, via new telegraph poles, across the Lancashire town of Burnley and its surrounding areas. The first services are expected to go live for local customers within the “coming months“.
IX Wireless has previously spoken of their aspiration to cover 250,000 UK premises with their broadband network this year and then 4 million by 2025 (here), but until now most of their work has tended to focus on the nearby town of Blackburn (they’ve also mentioned working in Manchester, Hyndburn, Preston, Bolton and Salford). On top of that they also plan to build some FTTP, but the rollout plan for that is still unclear.
The new network is often described as being “gigabit-capable,” although residential consumers cannot currently order such speeds and future upgrades may be required in order to make that possible. The existing network, we’re told, is based off 802.11ac (WiFi 5) WiFi technology, although they’re currently testing the 802.11ax R2 (WiFi 6) chipset too, which is expected to deliver speeds of c.300Mbps to end users, for the same price, in Q4 2024 for new towns.
At present, 6GI’s top “Ultrafast Fibre” tier provides a 100Mbps (20Mbps upload) capable service for just £21.99 per month which, despite the name, is still a wireless network.
Phil Walker, Director of 6G Internet, said:
“Parts of Burnley still suffer from poor connectivity, which we believe is unacceptable at a time when increasing numbers of people rely on the internet to enable them to work from home.
6G Internet is committed to improving the lives of those in the communities we serve and we are delighted to roll out our network to Burnley and its surrounding areas. Residents may have seen our teams out installing poles with our fibre-optic cables in their neighbourhoods and we look forward to the service going live, enabling many more people to take advantage of faster, cheaper internet.”
We should point out that the name 6G Internet is a little misleading, since they are not in fact making any use of the future 6G mobile technology, which doesn’t even have a provisional industry standard yet and won’t be fully developed for several more years.
So far, 6GI has already connected 1,000 homes to their network in Blackburn, and they will no doubt be hoping to achieve good take-up in Burnley (local population of 73,000). But they won’t be the only “gigabit-capable” network in town, with Virgin Media already covering the vast majority of the area. On top of that, Openreach also have some sporadic spots of FTTP coverage in the area, but not much.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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The whole advertising of the company seems very misleading “fibre” which is actually wireless, gigabit capable which only delivers 100mbps and 6G in their name seemingly to confuse customers.
If the ASA don’t step in at some point I’ll have to announce my new Gigabit capable ISP running on Openreach VDSL.
well they have fibre at the uplinks, i see it no different than calling fttc fibre which is what providers have done for years
Anyone remember Time Computers from Burnley, later Tiny Computers, later still, Supanet ISP, amongst others, well 6G is related to these dodgy companies, the name 6G is also intended, as to appear the next step-up from 5G, all the prior companies from this group have all perished due to their bad services,
Interesting, Never known a company so unscrupulous as TIME Computers was back in the day.
These guys need to access 28GHz or 26GHz spectrum and deliver 1Gbps tomorrow, its been done and proven globally
I was with 6G for 6 months poor customer service and not fixing the faults I had reported led me to leave via ombudsman. Company has potential but needs to make necessary changes. Its likely that for it to work they would need a lot more poles they may need another way if implementation. 100mbs in areas such as Blackburn and Burnley seemed to be some of the fastest in the area I believe the only company offering higher speeds is vigin at double the price.
Which is why Virgin is double the price, no doubt.
They’ve recently installed poles on my street, which doesn’t make any sense to me. We’re close to the exchange, get reliable 75Mbps via the phone line, and there’s gigabit cable available to all the properties that want faster.
You’d think they’d pole streets without fttp, wouldn’t you? But no. They’re already aware streets with it house folks with deeper pockets.
same with us.we get about 60mbps from bt and 1gbos from virgin but they’ve stuck their ugly poles on the front of our street.
these guys have just planted a bunch of poles on our street in nelson, at least 6 of them over 2 blocks of terraces. they look horrible but not too different from the old telegraph poles. only problem is theiyre in the front. the telephone poles are all in the back street at least. also don’t see the point of ruining the area for 100mbs wireless when we already have virgin offering 1gbps here.
Worst customer service – not have internet for over a week and none of the customer service agent care for this and if you stuck them in a contract then you cannot cancel them
AVOID THEM IF YOU CAN – they are worst and bunch of jokers