RETN Launch a New London to Brussels Fibre Network Route for Resilience

Eurasian focused network service provider RETN has today announced that they’ve launched a new London to Brussels “spectrum route” on fibre optic connectivity, which is intended to boost the resilience of their UK and Mainland Europe network through a more geographically diverse connection into continental Europe.

At present much of the UK’s international traffic is carried through established hubs, such as Amsterdam and Paris. But RETN has concerns over the concentration of international traffic across a limited number of established UK–Europe routes, as well as a growing awareness of the vulnerabilities affecting both subsea fibre and terrestrial networks more widely.

The new route is thus intended to provide an alternative path into mainland Europe, reducing dependency on traditional transit points and improving service continuity for customers. Within London, the route follows a geographically diverse exit path, avoiding heavily utilised Docklands egress routes that carry significant volumes of international traffic from East London’s data centre clusters.

The new London-Brussels route also uses a different landing station in London from the previously announced low-latency CrossChannel UK-EU route that departs from Slough, west of London. This provides an additional level of physical diversity for traffic entering and leaving the UK.

Tony O’Sullivan, CEO of RETN, said:

“Building resilient networks is no longer simply about adding capacity – it’s about creating genuine physical diversity. As international traffic becomes increasingly concentrated on a limited number of routes, customers need unique alternatives that strengthen business continuity. Our new London–Brussels route delivers exactly that.”

The route is also being supported by newly constructed Rotterdam–Brussels Dark Fibre line, creating the foundation for RETN’s own DWDM network in Belgium and providing greater operational control of this segment of the network.