Network builder and UK ISP Vorboss, which is currently investing £250m to rollout “London’s only full-coverage fibre network dedicated to business” (they’ve already built over 500km of fibre since 2020), has today officially launched their new 100Gbps product for businesses in the city – at a cost of £2,999 +vat per month.
Just to recap. The operator recently made a commitment to “cover all commercial buildings” in Central London with their new network (here), which they said would aim to deliver data / broadband speeds of 10Gbps as the new minimum standard. At the same time the operator revealed that they were testing a pilot 100Gbps service with customers at 22 Bishopsgate (Britain’s largest office building) and that product has today gone live.
On the surface, the aforementioned price point might seem expensive, but only if you’re a residential user with little understanding of how expensive an ultra-high-capacity dedicated fibre connection for businesses can be. When taken in the correct context, £2,999 per month for an “off–the–shelf” 100Gbps product is not bad at all, and it’s impressive that Vorboss felt confident enough to publish that in public (ISPs tend to keep such details private).
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Tim Creswick, Vorboss Founder and CEO, said:
“No other provider is prepared to publish a price for 100Gbps – if they’re even able to provide it. Our mission is to bring transparency to London’s businesses. Today we’re announcing a fixed price for 100Gbps, already delivered to pilot customers. We’re raising the bar for connectivity in London, and removing bandwidth constraints for the most demanding businesses.
Owning our product end to end means that we install and maintain the connection for our customers, ensuring rapid service, market-leading price points and the quickest fibre upgrades in the industry. We are completely committed to working in partnership with our customers by offering a simple, seamless and transparent solution to their connectivity needs.”
Vorboss added that it has created over 300 new jobs for Londoners in the last 18 months; for most, it is their first foray into telecommunications. Nearly 200 of those were graduates of their own in-house fibre training academy.
Finally, the Vorboss website mentions that their slower (can’t believe we just used that word for this) 10Gbps tier costs £650 +vat per month and that price point is said to be “guaranteed for the life of the contract.”
While their push for higher speeds is commendable, having 10Gbps at £650 being their entry-level offering seems like it would hold them back. Offering 1Gbps seems like it would be sensible.
Yeah, what you’re saying about a 1Gbps tier. But I guess they only want higher margin customers, possibly to reduce support costs.
I chuckled at this bit in the article: “Vorboss website mentions that their slower (can’t believe we just used that word for this) 10Gbps”.
Any business that can’t commit to £650 for thier Internet costs shouldn’t be leasing £100/sqft+ office space in central London. At the end of the day 10Gbps is the minimum speed required to remove the Internet connection as a bottle neck as all business LANs will now have a minimum of 1G per desk with 10G switch uplinks.
Exactly and by the time they need an office 100Gbps connection, they are a more than likely to have additional requirements for their own datacentre space and can then just get dark fibre back to their office for around £300/month (central London to Telehouse / IXN etc).
So this 100Gbps is a great marketing gimmick by Vorboss, with limited real world potential customers.
I wouldn’t think so. Was ecstatic to get 100Mbps for £300 a month 10 years ago, so 100x that speed for bit more than twice the cash would be a no-brainer.
Anyone want to take bets on how long before the usual suspect claims to have this to his house?
Will we see Vorboss upgrading their IX connectivity beyond their existing 10G + 20G connections to LONAP / LINX LON1 etc? I’d be uncomfortable buying a 100G circuit from a provider who was crossing their fingers on how my flows might look and hadn’t got sufficient edge capacity in place already.
My LL provider wants £990 for 10gbps so this is very good