The challenge
Commsworld – which acquired Fluency Communications, a startup business-only network operator, in 2012 – has enjoyed significant success in recent years. While demand for bandwidth has grown exponentially, so too has the installed base on the Fluency network, which now includes a number of popular events. In fact, Commsworld supplies internet connectivity to festivals – including the Edinburgh Festival – and world famous, highly prestigious sporting events taking place in Scotland and beyond. Such large events typically require vast amounts of bandwidth and with the UK’s major internet hubs situated in London and Manchester, ensuring reliable connectivity to these cities was crucial for Commsworld’s ongoing success.
In order to accommodate peaks in demand for its services, such as over the summer when events are in full swing, Commsworld needed the ability to rapidly scale the capacity of its major national network connections, and therefore needed an ultra-flexible network provider on-board.
The outcome
The summer can be a busy time for any company that counts major sporting events and festivals among its clientele. This was certainly the case for Neos Networks’ customer, Commsworld. Indeed, it’s at times of peak demand that Commsworld has reaped the most rewards of having a flexible backhaul provider on-board.
Commsworld’s ‘Fluency’ network, which it acquired in 2012, was originally built to deliver voice and data connectivity to enterprises in Scotland with the rest of the UK. While the company has invested heavily in expanding its Fluency network into Scotland’s largest cities, it needed to ensure its connections into London and Manchester were capable of supporting the increasing bandwidth requirements of even its most demanding clients in the events industry.
In order to guarantee its customers had access to fast and ultra-reliable dedicated internet access, Commsworld relied on Neos Networks’ expertise to increase the capacity of its optical wavelengths quickly, without compromising the quality of the service. While lead times for higher capacity services can take up to 90 days, Neos Networks completed the latest project initiative within just a week, giving Commsworld the confidence that the connectivity requirements of its sporting venue customers would be met in plenty of time. Commsworld now benefits from far greater capacity on its national backhaul routes between Edinburgh, London and Manchester. This extra capacity not only accommodates organic growth it also enables Commsworld to seamlessly cope with peaks in demand from major events without risking downtime.
Fully committed to operating a diverse network, which protects its customers from the risk of downtime, Commsworld’s core backhaul links are purely optical and the company has a fierce dedication to keep latency as low as is physically possible. This was key to its selection of trusted network provider, Neos Networks’ low latency optical networking services.
Neos Networks has successfully delivered optical wavelength services and dark fibre network connectivity solutions for the Fluency network for many years and this good, longstanding relationship gave Commsworld the confidence that its latest networking requirements would be met with ease.
“Having worked closely with Neos Networks for many years, we were confident that scaling our optical network as and when needed would be quick and painless. Indeed, summer 2015 has been an excellent example of how Neos Networks ticks all of the boxes for us. With one of the most significant Scottish-based sporting events on the calendar and the Edinburgh Festival to contend with, we were able to almost immediately scale two of our major national network connections to deliver the impeccable level of service that our customers have come to expect from us.” “As for the network team itself, our account director has been excellent, but we can also call on the expertise of Neos Networks as a whole and so have experienced the best of both worlds when it comes to customer service and delivery.”
Charlie Boisseau, CTO of Commsworld
About Commsworld
Commsworld, founded in 1994, is Scotland’s leading Telecommunications Network Provider, providing customers with a full range of integrated communications solutions.
In October 2012 Commsworld acquired Edinburgh based ISP Fluency, diversifying the business by allowing it to operate its own network to bring next generation connectivity to businesses across Scotland. Since the acquisition the firm has grown exponentially and added 2000 circuits onto the network to offer its clients a fast, reliable and robust alternative to the larger operators.
