Network operator and UK ISP Vorboss, which is investing £300m to deploy a 100Gbps full fibre network (Ethernet and broadband) – dedicated to business – across central London, has today launched a new 25Gbps service exclusively for its channel partners (resellers, ISPs etc.) as it continues to unlock high capacity products for businesses.
Since 2020, Vorboss has installed over 500km of fibre optic cables to cover all commercial buildings in Central London, and they’re continuing to expand. But until now most of their product launches have focused on 10Gbps and even 100Gbps (symmetric) speed packages, which is quite a big jump in performance and also cost.
The new 25Gbps tier is thus being positioned as a more affordable and gradual (intermediate) step vs the jump from 10Gbps to 100Gbps, which the provider is aware can sometimes “represent a substantial investment in new equipment” for some companies.
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Tim Creswick, Vorboss CEO, said:
“Our focus on delivering the next generation of high bandwidth services for London’s businesses means that we are the only operator offering 10, 25 and 100Gbps services – all as standard products. We made the decision several years ago to build native 25Gbps capability into our network. We kept that very quiet, so it’s exciting to finally be able to launch this publicly, following the final few months of service testing.
We were the first to market with a 100Gbps offering, and again we are now the first in the UK to launch a 25Gbps standard service. Initial feedback from our MSP partners has been very positive, as it gives them something new and unique to engage their data-hungry customers with, and provides the perfect step between 10 and 100Gbps.”
The news is good, at least for their channel partners, which now have something they can offer to customers that Vorboss itself doesn’t. But it’s unclear whether or when Vorboss might launch its own 25Gbps products directly for business customers in the city (we’ve asked them and will report back).
However, Vorboss aren’t technically “the first in the UK to launch a 25Gbps standard service“, since Ogi did that all the way back in 2022 (here) with their commercial 25Gbps package over Nokia’s 25G PON network technology. But the difference is that Vorboss do uncontended direct fibre links – not PON.
Incidentally, a number of other operators, such as Openreach, G.Network and Cityfibre, have also trialled 25G PON technology (here, here and here), but have yet to launch any products for business customers.
Seems quite sensible to require partners to be involved in delivering a 25Gbps service, it’s not a trivial thing to support routing at those sorts of speeds.