The Manchester Corridor is set to have a 100Mb fibre broadband network built available to both residents and businesses.
The Manchester Corridor runs down Oxford Road and that area of the city and so the fibre network will benefit around 500 businesses and 1000 homes to begin with.
The work is being paid for by the Northwest Development Agency (NWDA) who have put forward £1 million to fund the project which will be done by Geo who are UK Fibre specialists.
The project will likely be watched closely by other areas of the country as instead of waiting for BT or Virgin Media to install their own networks the project has been funded in another way so the development can start much sooner, if successful then it could trigger other similar schemes off throughout the UK.
The fibre network will be FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) which is the same style as the FTTH (Fibre The The Home) networks that BT are installing to parts of the UK, however the majority of the networks that BT will be installing are FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) which will deliver broadband speeds of up to 40Mb and not the 100Mb that FTTP/FTTH are likely to achieve.
The start of the project is set to be in spring this year with an initial 200 premises (both home and businesses) connected and then over the next year 1,500 homes and businesses are likely to receive it too.