BT Wholesale Enhances UK Connectivity via New Data Centre PoPs

BTWholesale’s plan to boost its fibre optic based Ethernet footprint and big business connectivity, which started earlier this year, has now seen several new data centre PoP (Point of Presence) sites go live at TelecityGroup in Joule House (Manchester), Equinix [LDN5] in Slough and a further one in Leeds. More are set to follow.

The new PoPs should help to add some extra resilience into BT’s Ethernet backhaul network, not to mention improved service delivery performance (e.g. the standard provision lead times for 1G ports in these locations is just 10 working days) and lower connection and rental costs (e.g. up to 75% cheaper than traditional access using direct network access products).

BT also plans to launch further data centre PoP locations during 2014 and they will add support for higher bandwidths with 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) ports becoming available in more key locations, much of which will take place next year when BT extends its core fibre optic network to support national connectivity at 40Gbps and 100Gbps bandwidths.

Paul Beacham, Ethernet & Optical Product Boss at BT Wholesale, said:

“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.”

Some of BT’s rivals have also been busy building new data centre PoPs in order to help cater for the rising demand, so it’s little surprise to see the national UK telecoms operator doing the same. More are expected to spring up next year and this will help businesses, including ISPs and mobile operators, to get the capacity required in order to supply their respective networks.