What does the future city look like? Will self-driving cars become the norm? To what extent will industry be taken over by artificial intelligence? Are blockchain and bitcoin going to be the dominant ways we transfer money and buy goods?

It seems clear that the future is technology-bound. But to enable developments of the digital kind, there needs to be the infrastructure to support it.

Enter the Gigabit City. A map of ultra-high speed networks run through fibre cables, offering consumers and businesses connections of 1 Gigabit (1,000 Megabits) per second, equating to speeds over a hundred times faster than the current national average. Consider that South Korea, the nation with the current fastest average internet speeds in the world, is powered by up to 100Mbits/s, and it is not difficult to see why the Gigabit City is being hailed as revolutionary.

So far, companies invested in Gigabits are by no means focusing on traditional heavyweight cities. In fact, both the UK and the US have seen a push for more regional roll-outs. In the US, Google Fibre and AT&T’s GigaPower’s have launched in smaller cities from Provo, Utah to Brownsburg, Indianapolis. In the UK, CityFibre has launched the Gigabit City in 50 towns and cities including Newcastle, Coventry, Aberdeen, Peterborough and Bath, with Leeds and Bristol to follow.

CityFibre says it prioritises public sector and commercial sites, including local government buildings, schools and hospitals, followed by businesses and industrial estates. The fibre networks are copper-free, tailor-made to suit each city’s needs, and ‘future-proof’. Installation involves minimal disruption, with equipment upgraded at each end and the network itself left untouched.

Faster internet equates to economic growth, such as job creation and industry development, as well as social, health and security boosts and improved access to public WiFi and 4G. Local business, government, health and education sectors could benefit from a modern fibre infrastructure, capable of meeting their data connectivity and communication needs for years to come.

If there is a way to future-proof a city, this could be it. Research commissioned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport found that the UK gains £20 in net economic benefit for every £1 of public investment in digital infrastructure. And according to CityFibre, digital connectivity can serve as a catalyst for economic and social growth or an obstacle for development.

According to our latest What Workers Want (2016) survey, today only 43% of employees in the UK are happy with the quality of office wireless connections and 33% of employees say they are not provided with the technology they need to work flexibly.

The future’s bright.

Further information

Contact Savills Occupier Services