Government Invests £7.2m In Broadband Research

David Willetts, the government’s minister for universities and science, on Friday announced the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) would contribute £7.2 million towards a project called the Photonics HyperHighway, designed to increase the theoretical top speeds of Internet backbone technology.

The six-year project will see researchers from the universities of Southampton and Essex, along with industry partners such as BBC Research and Development, Fianium and Oclaro, working new materials and devices for optical fibre networks, Willetts said.

Valuable industry

“The internet industry is worth an estimated £100 billion in the UK, so it is in our interest to make it even better for businesses and help boost economic growth,” Willetts said in a statement. “The Photonics HyperHighway project has the potential to truly revolutionise the Internet, making it much faster and more energy efficient.”

He noted that traffic on the global communications infrastructure is increasing 80 percent year-on-year, driven by applications such as Internet television services and cloud computing services.

He said the Photonics HyperHighway project underscores the UK’s world-leading role in this area of research.

David Payne, head of research at the University of Southampton, said it was a mistake to assume that the capacity of the world’s fibre Internet infrastructure is unlimited. That backbone infrastructure is “outdated” and needs a “radical transformation”, Payne said.

The project follows on from a paper published in October by the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre that found the end is within sight for the growth of optical fibre capacity.

Capacity crunch

In the study “Filling the Light Pipe”, the university’s David Richardson recommended that scientists begin working on fundamental advances to fibre-optic technology if they are to avoid a coming capacity crunch.

The Photonics HyperHighway project deals with the theoretical limits of fibre in the lab, according to Willetts. At the same time the UK and the EU are pushing for a wider rollout of fibre-based broadband across Europe, such as a Shetland Islands fibre project approved by the EU in December.