Liverpool Gets 10Gbps Boost from IXLiverpool and ISP Baltic Broadband

The not-for-profit Liverpool Internet Exchange (IX Liverpool) and ISP Baltic Broadband have collaborated in order to deploy a new 10Gbps fibre optic link into the Baltic Triangle development area, which is home to lots of businesses central Liverpool (Merseyside).

The announcement states that “businesses in the city region have long complained about the relatively slow broadband speeds compared to other parts of the UK.” However, it should be said that nearly the whole of Liverpool is already covered by Openreach’s ‘up to 80Mbps capable FTTC (with a bit of FTTP) network and Virgin Media also has a significant level of ultrafast cable coverage.

Nevertheless some areas have been missed out or remain dissatisfied with their choice of provider. As a result the new collaboration has already made the new network available at Baltic Creative’s campus, which is located within the Baltic Triangle, and its coverage is set to increase (the expectation is that it will eventually extend beyond the city of Liverpool).

Prof. Matt Wilson, Chair of IX Liverpool, said:

“We’ve been concerned for some time about top quality connectivity in the Liverpool City Region and so we’ve decided to DO something about it.

We haven’t received a penny of public money from the Government or the EU but we’ve had great support from the digital business community and we’re going from strength to strength. Hopefully we can help to attract more digital companies to come to Merseyside and create more jobs and investment in our future.

The Liverpool Internet Exchange, which is based in the Baltic Triangle, can’t exist without the support of commercial providers like Baltic Broadband and other Internet Service Providers who work together to make the internet better for everyone.

Already, lots of businesses have been in touch and it’d be great to hear from more – we’re always ready to listen and we need as many ambitious and forward-thinking entrepreneurs as possible to get in touch so that the momentum continues.

You don’t need to be part of the Baltic Triangle either to take advantage of this new opportunity.”

The partnership also plans to enable entire buildings that serve multiple businesses with 1Gbps connectivity through a new scheme aimed at landlords, which is called Baltic Broadband Enabled Buildings (BBEB). This allows landlords to attract high quality tenants by “offering them exceptionally fast internet speeds that are available from the day they move in thanks to a 60 second signup process.”

From the 1st of March 2018, IX Liverpool, which has been supported by more than £40,000 in donations from the local digital community, will also be able to offer connections from the exchange directly to cloud providers (bypassing the internet) to help with low latency applications (e.g. Virtual Reality, Crypto Currencies, Rendering and Big Data).

Interestingly the announcement repeatedly references the performance figure as 10GB (GigaBytes), which is likely to be incorrect since most normal ISPs tend to reference connection speeds using “bits” rather than “Bytes” (hence why we’ve written 10Gbps above). A 10GB connection would equate to around 80 Gigabits per second.