Amber is a leading investor in fibre and is proud to be the fund manager for the National Digital Infrastructure Fund (NDIF).
The demand for data worldwide is now at its record peak following continuous growth over the past three decades since the advent of the Internet. In 1992, global networks carried approximately 100 GB per day. 10 years later, this had increased to 100 GB per second, representing an increase of over 80,000%. The factors that fuelled this demand for data are expected to continue to support significant increases in consumption, particularly as their use cases evolve, with the rate of date consumption expected to rise to c.150,000 GB per second within the next five years
The significant growth in data demand clearly demonstrates the growing dependence on Internet connectivity that has emerged across many routine activities at home, on the move, in the workplace, and more fundamentally into the enablement of commerce, supply chains, production processes, logistics, and service delivery in nearly every sector of the economy. Internet access has been labelled the fourth utility within the UK Government, while the United Nations has stated that Internet access is a human right
Optical fibre is the superior fixed-line medium for providing broadband connectivity to homes and businesses. Unlike copper based technologies, optical fibre was specifically developed for transmitting large amounts of data over long distances and at higher bandwidths. In contrast, copper telephone lines and copper cable TV lines were originally conceived for other purposes before the advent of the Internet and have since been adapted over time to transmit digital data.