Tenants (commercial and retail businesses) of the 1.2 million square feet Here East campus, which is based at the heart of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London UK, can now access broadband and Ethernet speeds of ‘up to’ 1Gbps via WiFi and fibre optic connectivity within 5 working days.
The service forms part of a new network management system, which is owned by Here East and managed by Shoreditch-based technology business Optimity. The cross-connect platform will also allow tenants to connect to all services around the campus and to the key data centre locations in the London Metro area. Several key suppliers are involved, including Juniper Networks, RG Nets, Ruckus Wireless, Emerson and Netgear.
Here East states that London “continues to suffer from long lead times for fibre optic connections, and costs of installation are often three times the national average,” although they claim that their network overcomes this and can provision new connections “18 times faster” than the average lead time in the city (sadly the announcement doesn’t clarify the base of comparison for these figures).
Gavin Poole, CEO of Here East, said:
“This is part of our vision to deliver the most connected campus in Europe – where businesses, entrepreneurs, universities and technology experts will come together to experiment, build and create. We pride ourselves on our ability to connect and collaborate and technology is a vital part of our vision to bring people together to share ideas and to foster innovation.
Typically in London, tenants are left with the responsibility of arranging all their own technology infrastructure, including organising the installation of their own internet connection. The landlord needs to deal with a mass of administration required for this equipment to be installed and the tenant has to endure long lead times and high costs.
At Here East we take all this pain away so any company joining us (large and small) and universities can be productive as quickly as possible.”
In fairness, it’s probably been a lot easier for Here East to deliver this because their campus is based in the former Olympic Press and Broadcast Centre, which was already well connected and is currently home to everybody from BT Sport to Ladbrokes Coral’s tech and Loughborough University London etc.
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