Neos Networks Finish UK Expansion to Unbundle 550 BT Exchanges
Neos Networks has today announced that they’ve completed the latest key phase of their UK network investment programme, Project Edge, which means that they’ve now unbundled a total of 550 BT exchanges and will reach a “full fibre” footprint of more than 34,000km before the end of the year. Next stop.. 700 exchanges.
The announcement means that Neos will be able to put data speeds of up to 100Gbps, via their high-capacity fibre connectivity, within reach of almost 750,000 business postcodes across the length and breadth of mainland UK. All of this will be supported by delivery via a footprint of around 90 data centres and over 800 Points of Presence (PoPs) that ISPs and businesses can harness.
In the last year, this means that Neos has managed to unbundle more than 300 BT exchanges in order to hit its target, which is despite the complexities and challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and the periods of national lockdown.
Advertisement
However, Neos doesn’t plan to stop there, and they expect to have unbundled a total of 700 BT exchanges by the end of 2022.
Colin Sempill, CEO of Neos Networks, said:
“We’ve hit our 2021 target slightly ahead of schedule and that represents a great leap forward for our company and our vision to be the premier supplier of B2B focused infrastructure in the UK. But it cannot stop there, and Project Edge will continue to reach out to help UK businesses access full fibre, high-speed, high-capacity connectivity on their doorsteps.
During 2022 I would expect the number of unbundled BT exchanges to continue to climb towards 700, and we will also look to target last-mile fibre connectivity in key regional business hubs.”
All of this should also help to support the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Ofcom’s End-of-Contract Notifications Deliver Broadband Savings
Neos are quite good. They built a 100Gbit 200km ring in Aberdeenshire I believe. Only thing is their sales people are quite pushy but show me one that isn’t.
How does this fit in with BT closing exchanges?
Don’t feed the troll
Good question, from what I’ve seen of the Neos POP list, they are only building out into BT/Openreach exchanges which are not being closed.
It only makes sense for Neos to build into Openreach Handover Points (OHPs), e.g. the parent exchanges where they can establish multiple GEA cablelinks into the L2S switches to pick up FTTC/FTTP customers.
No point building a pop in a BT child exchange which will be closed in a couple of years time.
This network expansion already seems to be benefiting Three’s 5G service.
Since 5G went live on my local mast last year, it always maxed out at around 280Mpbs. But since Neos recently started offering 10Gbps services in the area, it can now reach 4-500Mbps at quiet times.