Introduction
Giganet is a highly experienced Internet Service Provider (ISP) with a strong track record of delivering superlative internet services to business and home users across the UK. Giganet has been providing business connectivity and telecommunications for over eight years. From 2020, Giganet also focused their efforts on connecting residential customers to full fibre broadband through its collegial partnerships with CityFibre and Openreach. Since launching its fibre broadband service to households over 12 months ago, Giganet has seen its reach extend to over nine million homes across the UK. Today its flagship project sees the company build out its own fibre networks in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, and West Sussex.
The challenge
In early 2021, Giganet took on the task of driving the UK’s network expansion in the Southern counties in order to deliver essential backhaul and data centre connectivity. The project formed part of a wider initiative to offer regional and national high-speed fibre connectivity to areas which, until today, have been digitally underserved, unable to take advantage of the benefits of high capacity, fibre broadband.
Due to its existing strategic network partnerships, Giganet was already able to offer robust connectivity to homes and businesses across the nation, but they were keen to expand this offering further. With this in mind, the ISP were looking to undertake a significant expansion of its infrastructure, in order to reach and support more homes and businesses still, focusing its efforts initially on the South of England.
Giganet selected Neos Networks to help them with its ambitious roll-out plans as they felt the renowned fibre connectivity supplier was best placed to deliver the connectivity required to carry traffic from its unbundled exchanges and data centres across into its national network. This backhaul offering enabled Giganet to connect their fibre offering into Neos Networks’ expansive 34,000km, high capacity fibre infrastructure.
The outcome
Not only did the collaboration boost Giganet’s plans for its own national network service, the network expansion project also saw Neos Networks support the ISP in increasing their capacity offering tenfold. This increase is foundational to both Giganet’s and Neos Networks’ commitment to supporting the UK government’s ambition to help satisfy the increased demand for high-speed fibre connectivity by 2025. With Neos Networks having invested heavily in the expansion of their own network in 2021, more than doubling their network reach with 550 BT exchanges now on-net, the national network provider has greatly contributed to the Giganet’s mission of minimising the UK’s digital divide.
Giganet’s plans for its own national network includes a commitment to providing only full fibre connectivity to its consumers. With this in mind, the company aims to have a core network and its first four exchange rings live by the end of 2022. Over the next four years, it then plans to deliver fibre broadband services to some 300,000 homes across Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, and West Sussex, via its own fibre network roll-out.
“Neos Networks rose to the challenge of providing us with resilient and high capacity backhaul circuits across a wide range of exchanges, as well as our core data centres. This partnership has enabled us to secure connectivity to our points of presence faster than expected, initially enabling each of our first four regional rings with resilient 100Gbps backhaul. We are now witnessing a significant acceleration of our South coast roll-out.”
Matthew Skipsey, Chief Technology Officer at Giganet
“Both Neos Networks and Giganet have adopted a collaborative and constructive approach to this project. Not only has this resulted in solutions being delivered faster than ever, but as the Giganet network grows, it also gives us the ability to transition connectivity between points of presence without any disruption. There is no doubt that by working in partnership with alternative network providers, like Giganet, the end result will be a better, faster, and more resilient connectivity for UK residents.”
Sarah Mills, Chief Revenue Officer at Neos Networks
