The UK’s first triple-play service offering broadband, digital TV and telephone services across a fibre-to-the-home (“FTTH”) broadband network has been launched to the first 286 of 4,200 homes at Wembley City, London, by Velocity1, a joint venture between Quintain Estates & Development plc and Industria Media Ltd.
The new service looks very interesting – Velocity1 is being built into all new homes at Wembley City as they are developed by Quintain, meaning that new residents can activate their phone, digital TV and broadband, with guaranteed speeds from 8mb to 100mb, via a single phone call on the day they move in.
60% of the residents who have moved into the first apartment building, Forum House, have already signed up with Velocity1, with an additional 234 homes scheduled for connection when the second residential building is completed in 2010. Quintain will progressively roll out Velocity1 to its other mixed-use schemes, as well as to those developed by other organisations across the UK.
Ultra high-speed fibre optic cables link each of the homes within Forum House to the Velocity1 data centre, eliminating the need to use an exchange and delivering exceptional broadband speeds and reliability.
Velocity1 offers a number of features including:
- No line rental
- More than 120 digital TV channels, including some premium content and HD channels
- Personal Video Recording (PVR): digital programme recording scheduled to launch in spring 2009
- Ultra-fast broadband, with speeds of 100 megabytes per second available to all customers
- VOIP: phone calls over the same fibre network
The system has also been designed on an ‘open access’ model, with third party service providers able to integrate their own services into the Velocity1 platform.
James Saunders of Quintain comments: “The scale of Quintain’s schemes enables us to embed and operate next generation technology for homes and businesses in a highly cost effective and streamlined manner. This model has a vital role to play in achieving the Government’s objective anticipated within the Digital Britain report of universal delivery of high-speed broadband services and digital television.
There is no doubt that having a FTTH ultra-fast broadband connection will be a great feature for a new home, and will deliver an online experience far superior to any DSL broadband provider. But the interesting thing is that you have to buy it with Velocity1′s entertainment package and it is not clear how appealing the TV content will be and how competitively it will be priced. Many residents may prefer to have the benefit of a 100 Mb/s broadband connection whilst also being able to enjoy a Sky+HD service for example,and this may be tricky as there will not be a BT line into the residence.