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While British Telecom and Virgin rely on partial fiber networks to deliver faster broadband, they can’t touch the speeds on offer from Hyperoptic, a new start-up fiber t0 the home provider competing for broadband customers in London. For just under $80 a month, customers can purchase the UK’s first 1Gbps broadband offering, which lets you download an HD movie in about 40 seconds.
Hyperoptic’s fast speeds come from the fact it is a true fiber-to-the-home provider. As a startup, the company is being very selective about where it is deploying service, starting with housing estates and multi-dwelling units where a significant number of customers can be reached within a single building or complex. The first completed fiber build serves 133 apartments in a building in Battersea. The company plans to extend the service to the rest of the complex in the coming months, and their effort has been aided by the fact the building is already “fiber-ready,” with pre-existing fiber faceplates ready for hookup. Hyperoptic is expected to first focus on more modern housing estates that have already made accommodations for modern telecommunications, be it coaxial cable, Ethernet, or fiber.
The company is competing with providers who already claim to deliver a fiber experience, but the company founder says those claims are based on half-truths.
“We are basing our platform on bringing fiber direct to the customer,” Hyperoptic founder and chairman Boris Ivanovic told PC Pro. “There’s been a lot of different marketing speak going on in the UK talking about what real fiber is and everyone is taking credit for doing fiber. But BT Infinity and Virgin – what they are doing is only partial fiber, and what we are doing here is bringing fiber into the buildings and directly to customers and that allows us to deliver 1Gbps.”
Hyperoptic’s services are priced to aggressively compete with other providers:
- 20/20Mbps: $20/mo
- 100/100Mbps: $40/mo
- 1000/1000Mbps: $80/mo
A $19.95 phone line rental charge and $64 installation fee applies.
And here I am in the U.S. paying Comcast $60.00/month for 15/3.5 with a cap, but hey, at least it boosts to 20 down for a whopping 10 seconds…
Canada here with 10 down, 1 up with that same boost for $60/month and a 95GB cap costing $1.50/GB over. Oh how I wish I had that gigabit connection…
Phil fails to mention that Prices Court in the Battersea/Wandsworth area of London is a pretty up market area. Prices for apartments in that area start around 500,000 pounds, somewhere close to a million dollars.
Feel free to pop over and buy one of the 133 apartments!
I’m not sure exactly what that has to do with the story. If the company was interested in marketing to Cadillac customers with endless amounts of cash, why charge so little for the service?
I suspect the fact the buildings were new enough to easily accommodate the fiber without a lot of up front construction headaches and costs was what made it a most attractive target to start.
Your headline says “London gets……” A more accurate headline would have been “133 Million Dollar apartments get …………” Clearly your first replier was confused thinking this was some sort of large roll out.
Hey guys, this is insane, it’s small now but imagine what it will be like in a few years when it has a steady income and expansion can happen.
By the time we get this kind of speed, London will probably have 10-100gbps.
This is crazy broadband speed! The maximum that I can have is 500Mbit/s and it costs whooping $100/month. Compared to salaries we have on average.
But would like to see this broadband in action, like downloading large torrents 🙂