ITS Technology Builds Wireless Superfast Broadband to Derby Business Park

The ITS Technology Group will soon deploy a new superfast fixed wireless broadband service to cover businesses on Derby’s (East Midlands, England) Pride Park, which can be found on the outskirts of the city centre (former industrial land between the River Derwent and railway lines).

According to ITS, the 80 hectare business park has been “consistently overlooked and has therefore not had a fibre upgrade“. This has left many firms with a limited choice to either use a slow copper line broadband connection or invest in an expensive dedicated leased line (not ideal for smaller businesses).

Roy Shelton, CEO of ITS Technology, said:

“With a lack of fibre optic broadband, the businesses on Derby’s prestigious Pride Park have found themselves having to put up with, and working around, less than adequate broadband speeds. Businesses can currently expect to get a maximum speed of around 2Mbps, which is considerably slower than the upwards of 8Mbps that many households connected to fibre optic broadband are able to access.

The main issue is that fibre optic networks can be expensive to build, and buying a specific business leased line is costly which has left Pride Park’s businesses with a perplexing issue.”

We assume the “upwards of 8Mbps” remark is a typo because “fibre optic” broadband is rarely that slow, even slower hybrid-fibre (FTTC) solutions normally manage to deliver much faster speeds; with a few exceptions for a minority at the edge of a street cabinets coverage.

In any case businesses on the Pride Park will soon have an alternative after ITS confirmed that it would build a new fibre optic network backbone to the area, which will then distribute symmetric wireless broadband speeds of 30Mbps. The installation costs can also be covered by the Connection Voucher scheme, which offers grants of up to £3,000 to help SME’s get a superfast broadband connection.

Apparently work starts on the build of the new infrastructure to connect local customers in December 2014 and any business based on Pride Park that would like further information should register their interest.