Broadband ISP Ogi Boost Data Capacity to Wales via New Fibre Route
Alternative network builder and broadband ISP Ogi, which is being backed by Infracapital to help deploy a multi-Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across South Wales, has today announced that they’ve nearly completed Phase One of a new diverse fibre route into Wales that will boost data capacity and resilience.
The operator has so far covered a total of 60,000 premises with their FTTP network – most of them residential – in Wales up to July 2023 (up from 47,500 in March 2023) and they’ve also added 6,000 customers “in less than a year” (here). But at the same time they’ve also been running a privately-backed project to bring new high-capacity connectivity and route diversity to Wales.
A new concession agreement held between the Welsh Government and Ogi is set to see the Welsh infrastructure provider bring new Dark Fibre and Microduct access products into the South East region of Wales, boosting capacity and resilience for the likes of carriers, hyper-scalers, datacentres and rival ISPs looking to expand across Wales, England and Ireland.
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Utilising the public-owned motorway and trunk road network, Ogi is installing a new diverse route into Wales over the Prince of Wales Bridge, into Europe’s largest datacentre campus – Vantage CWL1 – and onwards to key hubs such as Cardiff’s Empire exchange in the capital’s Stadium House.
Ben Allwright, Ogi’s Chief Executive Officer, said:
“With established datacentres – like Newport’s Vantage – and increasing interest from data hungry sectors like fintech looking to scale in Wales, now’s the time to bring this diversity and high-capacity resilience into south Wales.
The big data age is here. With our data consumption set to double every two years, there’s a need for more datacentres, more capacity and, ultimately, a resilient product network that can carry it all. This unique contract between Ogi and the Welsh Government is the very bedrock of Wales’s digital revolution; a high-capacity, diverse route, capable of moving data fast and reliably, side-by-side with bringing highly skilled jobs and greater prosperity to Wales.”
The move will also help Ogi to support its existing services, which in some areas can even offer connections as fast as 25Gbps via Nokia’s next generation 25G Passive Optical Network (25G PON) fibre technology (here). Ogi will initially offer dark fibre and microduct products ready for service in early 2024. Future phases of the scheme could see infrastructure reaching the west coast of Wales, supporting carriers and hyper-scalers to reach international subsea fibre connections.
In terms of the network itself. Ogi informed ISPreview that Phase One of the TRC programme rollout has the capacity for over 1,500 pairs of fibres, with each pairing capable of 1.6Tbps (Terabits) of data using commercially available products such as those from Ciena and Nokia. This equates to around 2,534Tbps of data capacity or 2.53Pbps (2530,000,000,000,000 bits per second).
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.
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Given there are already multiple routes between these locations, is this not a bit of a vanity project?
Hyperscalers are (rightly) paranoid about resilience. The existing high capacity routes go over the old bridge and through the railway tunnel. This project improves fibre diversity between England and Wales.
Why would Hyperscalers need this? As mentioned in the article, Vantage Data Centre between Newport and Cardiff is the largest such facility in Europe. It is therefore home to some very large cloud customers. For reasons of confidentiality they don’t say who – but you don’t have to search long on Bing to figure out at least one of them (there’s a clue there).
An old Oracle told me someone else also uses this DC
Openreach work in Newport and Cardiff area and improve fttp across South West already. This is frustrating as some properties have 3 independent networks (openreach, virgin etc.) and some do not have any. Why not create non profit company which would manage all infrastructure?
Hi Filip – This particular project isn’t really about delivery of fibre to homes/businesses. This is high capacity core network for other network providers to utilise to connect themselves to the rest of the UK and the rest of the world. In many cases network providers most consumers would not be aware of because they operate in the heart of the internet, connecting one country to another.
All I know is before this I would struggle to get my maximum of 65mbps and now I pay for 300mbps and I get 315mbps and the ping is very low (don’t remember off the top of my head) and it’s very stable.
Ogi haven’t any experience in selling wholesale, but they are owned by Infracapital (Neos, Gigaclear etc). This route has more value to Neos than it would ever have to Ogi, we’ll probably see pairs on this route swapped with-in the group from Ogi to Neos who will then either light it themselves or sell onto tenants at Vantage. It’d also be a handy Infracapital asset to have when they decide to merge the Gigaclear and Ogi operational networks, given Gigaclear have a presence east of Chepstow and around Bristol.
By all means pop along and chat to the Ogi Team who are currently at Capacity Europe in London, speaking to a number of prospective customers.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/justinleese_capacityeurope2023-activity-7120370957348687874-KT66?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
The same route that our ISP took when they did out area. Which is right next to the Bridge.