The Superfast Revolution Starts Here: What You Need to Know about Superfast Broadband in Bristol and South Gloucestershire

25/08/2016

Bristol is one of the UK’s most connected cities, with superfast broadband connections available to almost every property and download speeds that exceed those of most other metropolitan areas. With the rollout of new hyperfast systems, gigabit broadband is now available to many businesses in Bristol, putting the city at the leading edge of technological innovation.

The availability of high-quality, high-speed internet in the city makes Bristol a hub for businesses of all sizes, and the UK Government’s commitment to the ever-wider availability of superfast broadband means that the surrounding towns and villages are also being provided with new fibre-optic connections capable of achieving speeds of over 24mbps.

Bristol is connected

So what’s made Bristol into such a well-connected city? Partly, it’s the nature of the local business landscape; many film studios, aerospace engineering firms and global marketing specialists call Bristol home, and these bandwidth-hungry industries require high-speed internet access in order to reach their clients around the world. This demand for connectivity has been met by firms like Virgin, which has invested heavily in superfast broadband throughout the city, and supplies broadband to many properties in the area.

Market forces aren’t the only reason why the city has become super-connected, though; Bristol secured €25 million in funding from the EU in 2015 to upgrade its digital infrastructure as part of the Smart Cities and Communities initiative. This funding has helped the city to achieve average download speeds of 28.6mbps, placing it amongst the top ten broadband speeds in the country and substantially ahead of London’s 22.4mbps. Superfast broadband is available to 97.2% of properties, which is the highest percentage of availability in the UK.

Bristol at the cutting edge

Bristol is also home to one of the country’s first “gigabit” networks, with the new fully-optical “Bristol Network” offering speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. To put that into perspective, that is forty times faster than the city’s current superfast average, and two hundred times faster than the 2007 national average. A hyperfast gigabit network like this is hugely beneficial to a city because it allows businesses to interact globally, exchanging projects and information with clients anywhere in the world almost instantaneously.

How local businesses can take advantage of superfast broadband

As one of the UK’s leading centres of digital innovation, Bristol provides a wealth of opportunities for businesses to exploit high-speed internet to their advantage: companies can shift their data storage and telecommunications online to boost flexibility and productivity, utilise fully-managed networks for guaranteed stability and construct foolproof disaster-recovery plans to keep their business running no matter what - these services are all available locally from Bristol business communications experts who specialise in digital solutions, so there’s no need to deal with monolithic global corporations.

The whole country’s going superfast

It’s not only the city itself that’s benefitting from central investment; almost every town and village across South Gloucestershire is being fitted with ultra fast fibre optic connections too, as part of the UK Government’s “Broadband Delivery UK” (BDUK) scheme. More than 18,000 homes in the area have already benefitted from increased connectivity since investment began in 2013, and the initiative achieved its goal of providing superfast broadband connections to 90% of homes in the UK by 2016, a percentage that’s set to rise to 95% by December 2017.

Superfast broadband benefits rural communities by connecting them more closely with outside services; children can access their homework online, GPs can correspond with patients and healthcare authorities, and local businesses are able to co-operate with their clients anywhere in the world. This increase in connectivity has granted users access to services like VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which allows users to hold real-time voice conversations via their internet connection. VoIP provides a powerful and flexible tool for businesses of all sizes to expand their communications, and the combination of lower real estate costs and high-speed internet connections make the towns and villages surrounding Bristol a viable alternative home for city businesses, distributing wealth throughout the local economy.

The future of superfast broadband in Bristol and South Gloucestershire

Bristol is already one of the UK’s best-connected locations, and the city looks set to cement its place at the forefront of digital innovation with the ongoing rollout of gigabit networks. Superfast broadband is becoming faster and cheaper to provide, and the BDUK scheme promises to substantially increase the availability of optical fibre connections in the areas surrounding Bristol. The future’s never certain, but one thing is for sure - Bristol and South Gloucestershire are fast, and only getting faster.

Gemma Maroney is part of the team at Bristol business communications specialists Solution IP, providing fully-managed, high-speed, business-grade connectivity for local businesses.

 

 

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