The £500,000 project is funded by the NWDA and co-ordinated by the Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA).

Hailed as the first of its kind in the UK, Corridor Manchester will connect the homes and businesses in the Oxford Road area via fibre optic cabling, which is expected to be in place for the first cluster of users before the end of the year.

Funding a new generation

David Carter, head of the MDDA, said of the scheme: “For Manchester to keep its competitive edge on the national and global stage, we need an effective high speed broadband infrastructure. 

“We cannot wait for the market providers to do this for us – it’s a bit like public transport, private operators don’t build new train lines or tram tracks - we need to provide the core infrastructure on which they can build.  This will be an open access network available to all service providers.”

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, added: “Even at this time of economic downturn Manchester has ambitious plans for its knowledge economy. 

“We are committed to delivering Digital Britain and next generation broadband, and this new advanced infrastructure will help create exciting innovative new applications for the Internet which will benefit our residents and businesses.”

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Comments (15)

7  By cyberdoyle , on 25-03-2009 18:24 Congratulations Manchester, well done NWDA for encouraging true FTTH, first city to do it. This is a totally different ballgame to other services currently on offer and is commonly known as the eNdGAme. Those lucky people...   ... wish i could relocate Report

8  By Lindsey Annison , on 25-03-2009 18:32 This is FTTH, not the FTTC interim tech that BT plan. We are not even in the top 20 nations for FTTH, nor likely to be in a hurry as BT and Virgin are not planning FTTH yet.    If it is open access then that is a start. Who owns it is more important. I hope it is a mutually owned network that belongs to those it serves, and not to the council.    In the meantime, why anyone would want to sit around and wait for BT to do anything is totally beyond me. In 25 years (since 1984 when it was first proposed to fibre up every home) they have done nothing except sweat the copper asset - which we paid for in the first place - to suit shareholders. Their appalling record with ADSL (no SDSL in sight either) has left this country literally light years behind others, socially and economically.     Check out the Gbps connections in other countries, let alone 100Mbps symmetrical which many RURAL areas in countries such as Sweden, Estonia, Latvia now take for granted .....    When do you think BT will get to that stage if they haven't even got full FTTC coverage planned before the middle of the next decade?     It is time to JFDI and at least Dave and those associated with MDDA have taken a lead. Now for someone at NWDA to realise that the rural areas in their region are desperate for FTTH too, and that the economic benefits of funding it will come back to the region's coffers manyfold once it is deployed. Report

9  By Gez O'Brien , on 25-03-2009 19:16 We're a digital business based in the Northern Quarter and can't get a speed of much above 2Mbps down and a quarter of that up via ADSL. Of course I could pay a £7,000 connection fee and £6,500 pa for something every *so slightly* faster via BT.    If Manchester wants to be a place to do business we need some data infrastructure - at a price point that can be above domestic prices but below the high price points that BT and others want. Report

11  By Graham Mitchell , on 25-03-2009 19:45 Excellent news. Congratulations to Manchester and the MDDA for once again showing real leadership and bold vision, on behalf of the people and businesses of the city (although it seems from some of the comments above that some of the city's citizens are yet to fully grasp the importance of this announcement.     For those of us who have been following this issue over the last year or more, the news that Manchester is leading the way for public and community owned FTTH comes as no surprise, just as we are not surprised by BT Group's paucity of vision in its limited roll-out plans for the second class FTTC service (for which no doubt it will charge a handsome premium).    If we leave the the deployment of our next generation networks to the likes of BT Group and Virgin, the UK will simply fall further and further behind the rest of Europe in terms of our ability to compete on the world stage, while these short-termist profiteers squeeze every possible penny out of their assets. This stuff is way too important to leave it to the private sector.    To Dave Carter and Sir Richard Lees I say "More power to you!" This is exactly the sort of thing that you should be doing. Report

12  By Guy Jarvis , on 26-03-2009 03:59 Well done to ManchesterDC and Sir Richard for just getting on and making FttH real.    In other news BT seek to keep their monopoly obsolete copper wire network in the running... http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/249988/bt-reveals-which-towns-will-get-fibre-first.html    Fibre to the Cabinet is one meaning of FttC, I would like to propose another.    Fibre to the Copper    FttC is merely an intermediate step towards the eNdGAme of Fibre to the Home, the continuous optical pathway required to deliver NextGenus Telecoms in the 21st Century.    NextGenus will only be realised when the metallic path is eliminated and the incumbent telco 1.0 model finally displaced by structural separation of wholesale infrastructure from the applications, content and services that ride upon it.    FttC is the last gasp of the old ways, the toll-booth monopoly mentality, that has served the interests of the community poorly since telecoms privatisation in the 1980s and is entirely unsustanable in the digital world.    For some real innovation see what Dave Carter and the Manchester Digital Posse are up to here. Report

14  By Kees Rovers , on 26-03-2009 09:48 Congratulations from the Netherlands for Dave and his team NWDA and MDDA. Not everybody will understand the importance of his action. At least BT and the cableoperator understand it very well. Soon citizens and businesses in Manchester will discover that fiber brings quality of live to the homes and prosperity to the businesses in Manchester. And if you don't believe this: Come to Nuenen in the Netherlands. in Nuenen all the houses, schools, churches, hospitals, GP's, sportcantinas, houses for elderly, homecareinstitutions etc are connected to fiber with a take-up rate of > 90%. A world record.   I hope that Dave once will be knighted for his effort, like I was by the Queen of the Netherlands for this initiative. Citizens of Manchester support the inititiative of Dave. Start developing local braodbandservices. Connect your schools, hospitals, churches, and give special attention to your elderly. Fiber is much more than triple play. Now it is possible to connect the real world with the virtual world of heallthcare, education, religion, entertainment, culture, banking etc.    And BT ?? They will learn from Dave's initiativeand discover that people needs Ftth and wants to pay for it  They will follow soon. Manchester is a just a wake-up call for BT.    Welcome to Nuenen the Netherlands    Kees Rovers  founder Close the Gap/OnsNet Nederland  (fiber?) Knight in the order of Oranje-Nassau Report