Fibre-powered Wi-Fi trial heralds future of public internet access

CityFibre proves that with fibre powering base stations, free public Wi-Fi can rival the best home internet services. CityFibre, in conjunction with its internet service provider Gigler, has demonstrated to ISPs, local authorities and businesses, the user benefits of a pure fibre-powered public WiFi service, following the success of its trial during the recent Bournemouth Air Festival. During the four days of the event, over 4,000 people experienced Gigler’s next generation, ultrafast, free public Wi-Fi service. With many mobile devices capable of receiving 20-50Mbps, Air Festival visitors were able to make the most of their WiFi capability when accessing the free service. With users reporting speeds in excess of 30Mbps on their mobiles, the pure fibre-powered service is the envy of the majority of people with slower home connections. Even at 140m from a base-station, Air-Festival goers were able to access 19Mbps downloads and more than 15Mbps upload speeds. One laptop even achieved an impressive 125Mbps, twice the speed of the most commonly available ‘high speed’ residential service. The user experience is improved dramatically when WiFi is delivered over pure fibre networks as opposed to ADSL, the most commonly used connection in the UK today. Most typical free public WiFi services provide pitifully slow speeds of around 2Mbps that drop further still when a number of people connect at the same time. Using a state-of-the-art 100% pure fibre network however, enables next-generation public WiFi services to deliver as much bandwidth as a mobile device can handle. This faster service is also available to significantly more people, without a drop in service, so more people are able to enjoy the best WiFi experience possible. “Typically, free Wi-Fi offerings cripple a user’s experience due to poor capacity causing high congestion when dealing with surges of highly localised demand. CityFibre has proved however that with pure fibre powering the base stations, it is possible to offer incredible speeds and an unbeatable experience. This demonstrates the major opportunities that are available for towns and cities once a pure fibre infrastructure is in place. It shows that it is possible to deliver a market-leading free WiFi service in a civic centre that transforms the way visitors and locals can access and enjoy digital services when out and about. This is just one of many benefits of pure fibre infrastructure for residents and businesses and we plan to showcase more in the near future.” says Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre. ENDS CityFibre Media Contact: Maggie Zaboura Zaboura Consultancy Ltd T. 020 7297 3371 E. maggie@zaboura.com About CityFibre CityFibre (www.cityfibre.com) is one of the UK’s leading fibre optic infrastructure providers. By building dedicated fibre optic networks for the public and private sectors, we empower data-hungry users throughout the country, by unleashing gigabit speeds on future-proofed technology. Our transformational fibre infrastructure projects comprise point-to-point connections, metro rings and Fibre-to-the-Premises networks that make possible Next Generation Access and gigabit level services direct to local authorities, businesses and homes. CityFibre manages over 100 private fibre projects and seven separate metropolitan fibre networks under long-term contract with local authorities, police forces, healthcare organisations and universities. With almost 30,000km of fibre in the ground, connecting more than 350 sites and data centres across the UK, we are the country’s largest independent provider of fibre in secondary cities. In Bournemouth, CityFibre owns the largest FTTH project in the UK. With over 21,000 homes ready for service, the network enables service providers to deliver unprecedented ultra-fast broadband services. CityFibre’s Internet Service Provider Gigler, is the UK’s flagship pure fibre service, providing all customers with up to 1 Gigabit per second download speeds (100x the UK’s average) and up to 500 Megabits per second upload speeds (200x the UK’s average).