Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, boasts divine fibre optic cabling from Openreach engineers.
The BT-owned fixed line wholesaler has completed a gigabit broadband upgrade to Lindisfarne, a "historic tidal island" located approximately 1.5 kilometers off the coast of Northumberland. All islands can be described as historically significant in a geological sense, and also as tidal, as any island worth its name can be surrounded by quite a lot of water, but in this case it seems to mean that the tide has isolated it from the mainland for a period of time, as it once did in an old book.
The inhabitants of the island, apparently enshrined since the 6th century for unspecified reasons, can now access on their own and reach speeds of 1 Gb per second. This is part of a wider rollout of fiber optics in Northumberland, which is happening in many parts of the UK. The press release cites figures that say the North East will create a £1.7 billion boost to its economy once the deployment is complete.
Openreach also announced plans to roll out fibre broadband to most premises in Northumberland towns and villages, including Ashington, Corbridge, Haltwhistle, Haydon Bridge, Hexham, Longframlington, Lynemouth, Ponteland Red Row, Rothbury, Seahouses, Shilbottle, Stocksfield and Ullgem. If you live there, then good news.
"Twice a day when the tide comes in, people living and working on Holy Island have no physical connection to the mainland, but they can now of course stay virtually connected via broadband," said Mike Poole, chief engineer and Openreach North member of the England board. "The weather on the island can be extreme, especially in winter, so having more reliable broadband technology is arguably almost as important as speed, although speed will certainly come into play in the summer when thousands of visitors arrive.
"With the arrival of visitors comes additional demand on the existing infrastructure, including broadband. For many businesses on the island that support tourism, this new technology is critical. People still want to be able to use Wi-Fi in cafes to upload their holiday snapshots to social media and download movies in the evenings to unwind at the end of the day."
It seems that companies can't deploy another meter of broadband fiber without simultaneously explaining exactly how rich the local area will subsequently become. You can be skeptical of the accurate numbers they provide, assuming that these companies haven't developed some sort of ultra-advanced prescient AI engine that can accurately plan for the future, and then choose to restrain themselves from using that capability for anything other than figuring out how broadband deployment will affect the regional economy.
But usually more fiber = better if you live in an area without fiber, and we're seeing a very active market in the UK right now with companies like Openreach and many others buzzing around the country connecting places together with fiber networks. So vibrant in fact that the topic of how many players the market can sustain resurfaced at Network X this week, with some predicting an upcoming period of consolidation.
