MetroNet UK Fibre and Wireless Broadband Covers all of Greater Manchester

Business ISP Metronet UK has today announced that its hybrid superfast fibre optic (Dark Fibre) and carrier grade wireless network, which is understood to have cost £3 million to build, has finally achieved “ubiquitous coverage” across the entire Greater Manchester region.

The expansion project, which harnessed the ISPs existing network of 40 rooftop transmitters to deploy its radio-linked service, began earlier this year (March). It was only briefly interrupted in June 2012 when a management buyout, supported by private equity firm LDC, pushed an additional investment of £11 Million into the provider.

James McCall, MetroNet UK’s Managing Director, said:

“There doesn’t seem to be a day goes by that you don’t read something about the way in which businesses in the UK is disadvantaged as a result of poor Internet & data connectivity. At Metronet (UK), we have been keeping our heads down and growing our network in a sustainable and organic fashion. As a result, Greater Manchester has by far the most powerful, sophisticated and resilient Metropolitan Area Network in the UK.

We’ve spent the last few years building a completely new infrastructure across the region from scratch. We have spent millions of pounds on scalable and resilient infrastructure and have built nearly 100 new points of presence. We can connect new customers to the network in a matter of days. There is nothing like this anywhere else in Europe, let alone the UK!

There isn’t a business in the area that cannot be reached by the Metronet (UK) network. Furthermore, we don’t suffer with the normal way leave issues that plague the likes of Virgin & BT, extending lead-times and often pushing the installation prices through the roof once the survey is completed.”

Metronet UK currently provides connectivity solutions to more than 20% of Manchester’s top 500 companies and it has further plans to expand similar networks in Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham and Crewe. Work to expand their network’s reach down the M6 and M62 corridors is also underway. The ISP is currently valued at close to £15m.