O2 and Zayo Sign Big UK Fibre Optic Deal to Boost 4G Mobile Data Capacity

Mobile operator O2 has today signed a huge 18-year agreement with the Zayo Group, which will see the mobile giant replace their old SDH and Ethernet-based managed services infrastructure with a new “fully resilient core” fibre optic network across the United Kingdom.

It’s understood that much of Zayo’s service to O2 will make use of the GEO Networks infrastructure that they gobbled up during May 2014 (here), which includes a dedicated fibre optic network (Dark Fibre) that spans from Glasgow to Salisbury (4,500 route km) with 19 connectivity points around the UK (e.g. Slough, Croydon, Newcastle and London).

The new infrastructure should make plenty of “flexible” capacity available to O2, which has become especially important given the ever rising data consumption of their growing 4G (LTE) Mobile Broadband based customers.

Adrian Di Meo, O2’s CTO, said:

“With the O2 4G network now covering over 260 towns and cities and half of the UK population, there has been unprecedented growth in the amount of data traffic transmitted across the network. A year after the launch of our 4G network, it has already carried a total of 5,400 Terabytes of 4G data, which is the equivalent of eight million hours of HD video.

Deploying high capacity core fibre is essential when faced with this increase in data traffic and the resilience and reliability of our network is important for customers. Zayo’s track record, expertise and experience made them a natural choice to provide this fibre optic infrastructure. The new backbone will continue to help deliver a great digital experience for our customers.”

As usual the deal was signed for an undisclosed sum, although we’d anticipate that the investment involved is fairly sizable given the capacity demands of a large operator like O2 and the need to replace their old infrastructure. Rival operators have also signed similar deals over the past couple of years with major fibre optic suppliers, with Vodafone even buying their own in the form of Cable & Wireless.