Glide Go Beyond Student WiFi to Deliver 100Gbps WAN for King’s College London
Clevedon-based broadband ISP Glide Group has announced that they’ve significantly extended their existing relationship with the university of King’s College London, which previously covered providing internet connectivity to student accommodation and campus-wide guest Wi-Fi. The communications provider will now also deliver a resilient, high-capacity managed Wide Area Network (WAN).
The agreement will see Glide connect King’s sites and datacentres through a 100Gbps (Gigabits per second) capable managed network designed around “resilience, diversity and clear accountability“. The new connectivity will underpin critical academic and professional services, supporting staff, students and researchers across the site.
The new contract will deliver the infrastructure through a combination of Glide connectivity solutions, although they didn’t reveal much detail on this part in the announcement.
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Tim Pilcher, CEO at Glide, said:
“We’re delighted to be expanding our relationship with King’s College London. This agreement reflects the confidence that comes from strong delivery, trusted service and a shared focus on long-term partnership.”
Karl Everett, Head of Infrastructure at King’s IT, said:
“The implementation of a 100Gbit/s network is a vital investment in the university’s digital infrastructure. It will significantly enhance our ability to support data-intensive research, enable faster collaboration, and ensure our academic community can work efficiently with modern tools and large datasets.
Adopting a single supplier also strengthens resilience by simplifying network management, reducing points of failure, and improving reliability across teaching, research, and administrative services.
This upgrade directly supports King’s Strategy 2030, which sets our ambition in service of society through academic excellence, enabled by effective services and robust digital infrastructure. It positions the university for future growth, providing the performance, security and flexibility needed to support emerging technologies and sustain excellence in research and education.”
The news doesn’t reveal how long the contract will last or how long the deployment might take, although Glide has plenty of experience with WAN deployments.
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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It’s a little surprising that KCL chose Glide over Janet — any insights as to why?
Especially when Janet Uni Networks is infinitely nicer and just better than Glide lol
The sites are being connected together by Glide. Will still use JANET to reach the rest of the world.
Presumably what Glide offered was a better fit for their needs and budget given the existing arrangements and Glide’s fibre network.
Yatton, not Clevedon?
Not Clevedon nor Yatton – actually Kenn. But that’s closed now so it should say Birmingham based Glide.