The UK city of Liverpool looks set to benefit from a new superfast fibre optic network that will link Liverpool City Council's (LCC) existing cable with Global Crossing's global IP-based network. The £1m 'Networks Service Demonstrator' project (Fibrenet) will be partly funded by a grant of £400k from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and is being lead by AIMES Grid Services.

The city's existing fibre network already links up many universities, hospitals and businesses. At present it is mostly used for CCTV traffic control. Fibrenet intends to adopt new switching equipment from Virgin Media Business, thus allowing the cable to be directly connected into a high capacity (10Gbps) transatlantic cable.


The project is one of five 'Networks Service Demonstrators' selected by the TSB last November 2010 to become national Hotspots where businesses will be able to test new business models, applications and services that can be supported by advanced, open and flexible networks and network services. It should pave the way for both faster and cheaper business broadband ISP solutions.