NYnet is an initiative created by North Yorkshire County Council along with funding from Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency for Yorkshire and the Humber, to create a carrier class backhaul infrastructure delivering multiple gigabit capacity to points of presence located in BT exchanges throughout North Yorkshire.

North Yorkshire has traditionally offered little incentive for service providers to invest in Local Loop Unbundling. To some extent this is due to low population densities around exchanges, but equally, the cost of backhaul from core networks that pass through Leeds or York to towns such as Scarborough or Northallerton, has acted as a direct disincentive to Service Providers. Consequently there is little innovation to deliver broadband services to the market other than that offered by IPStream.

By building the backhaul infrastructure to 12 points of presence, NYnet will not only serve the needs of the public sector in providing connectivity for schools, colleges, NHS sites etc, but will offer low cost gigabit backhaul to service providers wishing to either LLU or provide direct services to businesses or business parks. In addition, as well as supporting the supply side via a carrier class network, NYnet will help to stimulate demand and demand aggregation through specific business and inward investment activity.