With more countries adding broadband Internet to their respective lists of essential public utilities, customers expect the speed of these connections to improve.
Gigaclear, a relatively small broadband carrier that began sending data packages in 2010, left everyone in awe when it announced that it is testing the UK's first 5 Gbps broadband connection service. The Internet provider is only an island in a sea of big carriers and it operates in 36 communities from five counties. Also, the fibre-to-the-premise network (FTTP) is pretty thin, only covering around 10,000 homes. To check whether or not Gigaclear's network is near you, simply input your ZIP code to their website's Postcode Checker.
In the fortunate case that you are near a Gigaclear hub, be prepared to shell out a consistent amount of cash for its premium services. The company stated that a home subscription will cost a monthly £399 (about $606), while a business subscription goes as high as £1,500 ($2,280, give or take) per month. These are the estimated tariffs for next year, when the broadband hyperspeed will reach all Gigaclear's customers.
In the United Kingdom, for instance, attributes such as "ultrafast" or "superfast" appear more often in home broadband offers. But what do these abstract notions mean in layman terms, and exactly how fast can users expect their downloads and uploads to complete?
According to Gigaclear, downloading a 1.5 GB video will take nearly eight minutes on the average UK home broadband service. When the 5 Gbps package is in effect, four to six seconds will be all it takes for the video to reach your hard drive.
"To be clear, this is a premium service that gives the fastest Internet speeds in the country to those of our customers who want the best connection that they can get," Chief Executive at Gigaclear, Matthew Hare, said. He pointed out that his company offers will do nothing else but offer "absolutely phenomenal" speeds.
The company stated that the level of Internet traffic in the United Kingdom expanded five times in the last five years and quotes voices from the industry claiming that the increase will triple until 2018.
"People will need significant bandwidth to live and work the way they want," Hare underlined.
