The UK government has revealed the names of eight firms that will each receive funding for trials of ultra-high speed broadband in a number of rural areas across the country. With a 10 million pounds ($16.5 million) pot to disperse, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has confirmed the awards which range from 175,000 pounds to 2 million pounds, Telegeography.com reports.

The eight winning suppliers are: AB Internet, which has been awarded 848,000 pounds to develop the deployment of hybrid fixed/fixed-wireless technologies in Wales capable of delivering 50Mbps data speeds; Airwave, which will receive 1.56 million pounds to explore a range of alternative platforms in North Yorkshire – Wi-Fi in the 2.4GHz band, point-to-point multipoint fixed-wireless in the 2.4GHz or 5.8GHz band, Long Term Evolution (LTE) small cells and TV ‘white space’; Avanti, which has been granted 886,000 pounds to explore the rollout of a 30Mbps KA-band satellite wholesale platform in Northern Ireland and Scotland; Call Flow, which is awarded 1.19 million pounds to develop a number of hybrid engineering techniques in Hampshire, including sub-loop unbundling, fiber deployments, fixed Wi-Fi and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP); Northumberland-based Cybermoor, which will take 450,000 pounds to explore ways to finance social investment in FTTP and wireless platforms in the region; MLL, which will receive 958,000 pounds for a feasibility study of a wholesale OSS/BSS platform to integrate and aggregate wireless networks in Kent; Quickline, which receives 2.05 million pounds to explore a number of line of sight (LOS), near-LOS and non-LOS wireless initiatives in Lincolnshire; and Satellite Internet, which will get 175,000 pounds to develop a KA-band satellite uplink/downlink backhaul solution covering Devon and Somerset.