BT extends its Ethernet fibre footprint with the launch of additional three new PoP (Point of Presence) sites in data centres in Manchester, Leeds and Slough, making it easier for BT’s wholesale customers to make Ethernet connections into BT’s core network.
According to BT Wholesale, the investment will be able to substantially reduce the connection and rental costs for customers, as well as speeding up the time it takes to interconnect with its network. BT Wholesale’s data centre PoP rollout began earlier this year, and the specific sites to go live this month include: TelecityGroup in Joule House, Manchester,and Equinix (LDN5) in Slough and another in Leeds. The footprint already includes Telehouse Europe North and the Global Switch1 data centre in London, as well as one of the UK’s largest data centres in Newport, South Wales.
BT plans to launch further data centre PoP locations for the rest of 2014 as well as supporting higher bandwidths with 10Gbit/s ports available in key locations. Next year BT will be extending its next generation optical network into a number of data centre locations supporting national connectivity at 10Gbit/s, 40Gbit/s and 100Gbit/s bandwidths.
Paul Beacham, General Manager, TDM Data, Ethernet & Optical Product Management at BT Wholesale
This is part of a wide investment in BT’s Ethernet footprint across the UK, and it comes at a time when the cloud and hosted communications services market continues to grow rapidly.We believe the huge benefits of the cloud can only be achieved if hosted services are run over reliable, high capacity fibre network connectivity, which is delivered flawlessly. These services are being adopted in increasing numbers by businesses of all sizes, so BT is investing in more network options to support that growth in demand. We want to be in the right locations and at the right price for our customers in order to support, satisfy and stimulate the growth of UK plc.
