ESB Announces the Completion of its East-West Ring.
ESB Telecoms Limited (ESBT) and Geo Networks, a UK fibre network provider, a leading fibre network provider, has today announced the completion of the newest diverse optical fibre ring between the UK and Ireland, providing the most advanced, secure and reliable, high performance network between the two countries.
Utilising Geo’s substantial UK fibre network and the FibreSpeed network in North Wales, Dublin and London are now connected for the first time in the same way as many other European cities, with a high fibre count, diversely routed cable system.
Demand for high capacity, scalable bandwidth between the UK and Ireland is growing fast and Geo’s new diverse route design is specifically optimised for heavy data users such as data centres, mobile and fixed line carriers, cloud providers and the digital, financial and high tech sectors. With a high fibre count and the shortest routes, customers will benefit from the most modern fibre technologies over two new routes, providing virtually limitless capacity, best in class low latency bandwidth, future-proofed and 100Gbps capable for even the most demanding of requirements.
With multinational customers such as Cogent already signed up to use this new network, Geo will provide its customers with the ability to connect to their networks and data centres in the UK and Ireland. In addition, organisations across Ireland can now connect to anywhere in the UK including direct connectivity into over 100 data centres and key internet exchanges in London and elsewhere in the UK.
“We are delighted to have completed the first fully diverse, Anglo-Irish cable system offering dedicated fibre solutions. The combination of network reach in both the UK and Ireland, our commercial model, 10 years of service excellence and the design of this subsea connection will provide what we believe will be the preferred choice for organisations looking to prioritise low latency, unlimited bandwidth and reducing their total cost of ownership,” said Chris Smedley, Chief Executive, Geo. “With business demand for high capacity data networks growing all the time, it is vital that they have the infrastructure to support their needs. Customers on both sides of the Irish Sea will benefit from a single service provider offering a combination of two routes between the UK and Ireland, and the diversity will provide unequalled resilience, unmatched in service availability.”
“We are committed to leveraging our capability and assets to deliver value for customers.” said John McSweeney, Head of Innovation at ESB. “The new fibre connection to the UK is a natural extension of ESB Telecom’s existing fibre network. Companies based here can now directly connect to over 100 data centres and key internet exchanges in London and elsewhere in the UK through a single supplier. This is a huge boost to Ireland’s communications infrastructure, which will help to attract high growth, data intensive companies to locate here”.
A pioneer of dedicated fibre networks in the UK, Geo is the only provider to offer private optical connectivity on two completely diverse routes between the UK and Ireland for a fully resilient solution. With a proven 10 year history of service excellence and a trusted partner to over 200 customers including large data users in the Enterprise, Service Provider, Carrier, Mobile and System Integrator areas, Geo’s unique proposition provides a range of solutions over the route from dedicated dark fibre to fully bespoke design, build and operate models; fully supported by Geo’s highly skilled and experienced design, customer service and operations teams, delivering exceptional service and network availability.