First UK Families Receive Vodafone Gigabit Speed Home Broadband

Milton Keynes, UK: Vodafone has today begun offering home broadband speeds of 1 gigabit per second (1,000Mbps) – about 20 times the current UK average.

50 customer homes in Milton Keynes will be the first to test Vodafone Gigafast Broadband – a new full fibre home broadband service – before it is made widely available.

Vodafone Gigafast Broadband runs over fibre optic cables at every stage of the connection to the Internet, instead of using old copper-based wires. This means households will enjoy a faster and more reliable broadband service, and will enable family members in a busy household to go online at the same time, using multiple devices. 

With Vodafone Gigafast Broadband, everyday tasks that rely on transferring data can also be completed faster than ever before. Uploading a memory card containing 16GB of holiday snaps and videos to the Cloud takes just two minutes, versus the current UK average of five hours and 44 minutes. And backing up a 200GB hard drive to the Cloud takes less than half an hour – instead of nearly three days. 

Micaela Perez Amaro, a dance instructor and mother of two, who was one of the first families to test the broadband said:

“Before we started using Vodafone Gigafast Broadband, I couldn’t work from home. There’s no reliable broadband where I live in Milton Keynes, so every time I wanted to send a video to a student, I had to drive to a relative’s house in London to use their broadband.”

Nick Jeffery, Vodafone UK Chief Executive, said:

“Full fibre is vital to our digital economy and to the UK’s future as a digital leader, yet just 3% of UK premises currently have access to it. That’s why we are offering Vodafone Gigafast Broadband and making it available on a mass scale, reaching a million UK homes by 2021.”

At the same time, demand for connected home technologies is growing. Currently about a third of UK homes contain three or more connected devices, and that number is projected to reach an average of 8.7 connected devices by 2021. 

With that in mind, Vodafone is also expanding its V by Vodafone range with two new wearables and a smart home kit. All three products have been designed to make smart living a reality for the average family – with ease of use and value for money being top priorities.