Cumbrian firms wait to hear on superfast 4G mobile rollout
Last updated at 12:25, Wednesday, 22 August 2012
Businesses in Cumbria are still waiting to find out how quickly the area can hook up to a newly announced roll-out of next generation broadband.
A clutch of firms in the county have recently been given tantalising access to turbo-charged broadband as part of a six week trial.
It has involved using 4G mobile technology – up to seven times faster than 3G - which many people use on smart phones and tablets for browsing the internet.
Provided by Everything, Everywhere - the owners of the T-Mobile and Orange Networks – the trial has pulled around 50 business in rural Cumbria out of the internet slow lane and into the fast lane.
The trial was masterminded by Penrith MP Rory Stewart but is now coming to and end. Everything, Everywhere were yesterday given official approval to roll 4G out UK-wide from September.
But firms in the county are still in the dark about how quickly Cumbria can access the new technology or whether they’ll be at the back of the queue of an infrastructure programme.
Commentators have suggested Cumbria may not be a priority with the focus likely to be on connecting large conurbations to 4G first for commercial reasons, rather than sparsely-populated rural areas.
Everything Everywhere would only say that the trial is continuing in Cumbria and there are no plans to end it “at this time”.
A spokeswoman said: “Everything Everywhere is planning for a 4G rollout but we don’t have any details available on this (what it means for Cumbria) yet.”
Tim Ellis is a co-director of James Walker Ellis Associates, a photography and graphic design company based on the Blencathra Business estate at Threlkeld near Keswick.
Mr Ellis said the company had been using a 4G router as part of the trial and it has propelled speeds from a third to a half a megabit per second (mbps), to 10mbps – making it 20 times faster. He explained how the business sometimes has to upload files as large as 100mb to send to clients, which had caused a massive drain on the office network.
Mr Ellis said: “My understanding is that the trial will continue for a time and then eventually the service will be made more widely available and become a permanent option for us. What this has done is levelled the playing field. “
James Walker, of the company said: “The rollout of 4G finally provides a real and viable solution.”
First published at 11:24, Wednesday, 22 August 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk
bt s service stinks they want to get a normal service right before they talk about a superfast service i get less than 2kbps all i get is yahoo not responding and i live in whitehaven not a little village at the back of beyond if they cant get it right in the towns its about time it was passed to some one who can. maybe thats what it needs, bt have had it to their selves for far to long its about time some one else took over and started doing long over due repairs to the exchange bt addmitted it was exchange problem but its too costly to repair,they charge enough rental so its about time they spent it on up dating exchanges if they want to continue
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I hope that A) Cumbria gets 4g quickly so I have to stop coping with internet speeds that slow down when other people in the same village use it. B) That the internet speeds dramaticly increase from 0.03-0.8 Mbps (sometimes I have to wait literally hours for a 240p YouTube video to buffer) and finally C) that the internet is more reliable, I would love to be able to download games from the internet in one go rather than have to reset the download when the internet breaks, or so that I can watch YouTube without having to wait for it to re-buffer after the internet has dropped. Oh and a final thing it needs to be cheap and unlimited I use the internet heavily--easily over 60 GB a month and I can't really afford more than I am paying now.
Posted by Jamie on 6 December 2012 at 17:11