Back at the start of February I had one of my occasional rants against municipal WiFi and suggested that Manchester would be much better off if the Digital Development Agency instead pushed for a fibre-optic network, that would deliver much greater bandwidth and would be genuinely different to what is already on the commercial market (unlike its plans for a wireless network).
Well it seems my wishes have been answered. There’s no chance I had anything to do with it – the chances of a strategy getting through a public committee between Feb 1st and now are almost infitessimally small. But I’m glad that someone over there is thinking along the same lines. The latest strategy update proposes a Fibre to the Home (FTTH) network.
A fibre network will make Manchester a genuinely different prospect for media and IT companies. It will not only give them enormous bandwidth to play with for their own purposes, but it will – if executed right – provide them with a test bed for their wares; a captive community of high-bandwidth consumers and businesses who can help them to understand which high-bandwith applications and content have genuine value and might be best launched on to the open market once the rest of the UK catches up.
As a geek I really hope that we get to be guinea pigs for such a test, whether I have to access the services from home or in the office. And as Mancunian – even if it is my adopted home – I would love to see Manchester take such a leap forward.
