By Matt Williams, Head of Data Centre & Managed Service Provider, Zayo Europe.
I live on the south coast of England, a place where even Londoners are jokingly considered ‘Northern’. I’m originally from the Midlands, and joking aside, as a youngster interested in the technical sphere, I felt it necessary to pursue my career in the south, where there were certainly more opportunities. That was over 30 years ago, and so much has changed since then. In the dense political complexity of the levelling-up agenda, I thought about how Zayo Europe is supporting Northern growth through connecting industries and communities as I prepare for the Connected North event on 23-24th of April.
This is the Zayo Europe network in the North of England and Scotland:
Digital infrastructure is a strong investment magnet – increasing productivity, and creating jobs. Without investment in network infrastructure in the North, disparity would remain and growth opportunities would be missed.
For example, there is still a dominant reliance on London routing for Internet traffic, which can cause challenges for businesses across the entire UK and even Europe. Zayo Europe has addressed this by creating unique IP routes, and a direct transatlantic route straight out of Manchester, meaning location is no longer an issue in terms of performance and reliability for Internet traffic.
Zayo believes in the Northern Powerhouse
Zayo Europe understood the importance of the UK North early on. If you think of it in terms of European countries – the Northern Powerhouse would be amongst the biggest economies in Europe. Manchester is its capital, and with the city being home to more than 10,000 tech businesses, Manchester is now the leading tech hub outside of London.
The 2025 Capital Enterprise report named Manchester the most popular city outside of London for tech startups. Capital Enterprise has now launched a Greater Manchester accelerator programme for new AI businesses. The programme will accelerate 40 high-potential companies in building AI solutions for climate, health and generative AI.
Our network can provide access to 20 Openreach exchanges in the North of the UK, the majority of data centres in Manchester, and many more in Northern locations, such as Stellium in Newcastle. They said, “In Newcastle, Zayo Europe has deployed a full set of lit fibre services, including IP, into the Stellium Datacentre. This will allow Zayo Europe to supply connectivity requests locally while also supporting North East England’s rapidly developing technology sector.” Last year Stellium announced; “A global mobile network operator has co-located at Stellium 1 in Newcastle and ITPS in County Durham, as part of a joint hosting solution to optimise 5G services being rolled out across the North East of England. Stellium’s alliance with ITPS and mutual relationship with Zayo Europe was seen as a key differentiator by the customer. Both data centres are directly connected via Zayo Europe’s networks as part of a Disaster Recovery and failover initiative, ensuring a highly resilient solution for hosting 5G in the region.”
Zayo Europe is always expanding, and meeting the exploding demand for data is crucial for economic growth. I am proud to be leading our initiatives to build partnerships with data centres providing the core infrastructure to build eco-systems for all digital activity across business, education, government and the community.
In Manchester, one of our data centre partners, Lunar Digital, uses Zayo Europe’s extensive network infrastructure in all three of their data centres, Lunar 1, 2 & 3. Lunar Digital has plans to expand its data centre footprint to new regions, and with Zayo Europe’s owner-operated fibre infrastructure, any new site can be connected quickly, efficiently, and without third-party bottlenecks. Together, we’re delivering innovative, reliable, and secure digital solutions that are fueling growth and success for Northern Powerhouse businesses, and supporting universities with their rising demand for high-performance computing (HPC). The demand for HPC has never been greater as universities tackle increasingly complex challenges like running large-scale calculations, complex simulations, and modelling in science, medicine and engineering. This is reshaping how academic institutions approach their IT infrastructure.
Pulsant has 12 edge data centres strategically located around the UK, including Edinburgh, Manchester, Rotherham and Newcastle, and all 12 are interconnected by Zayo Europe’s low latency network with access to our Tier 1 global Internet backbone. Pulsant wants to help every business become a digital business and they believe that no business should be constrained by location, capability or size. Having access to the Zayo Europe network means regional businesses can access 400Gb capacity to locations across the UK without having to backhaul through London. Our high-speed optical backbone comes 400G-enabled and 800G-ready, ensuring connected businesses stay ahead of the increasing AI and data demands.
Recently, Zayo Europe has expanded into the AtlasEdge Manchester data centre, strengthening regional connectivity further. AtlasEdge is a pan-European edge data centre provider and supports Manchester’s businesses with colocation services, low-latency connectivity, and access to a vibrant tech community. This deployment provides greater network diversity, resilience, and scalability.
We’re always adding reach, next up is the nLighten data centre in Leeds. The demand for data is growing rapidly, and meeting that demand is crucial for economic growth. The partnership of data centres and network connectivity provides the core infrastructure for all digital activity across business, education, government, and the community.
Why not a Northern Silicon Valley?
Whether labelled this or not, there are already multiple tech hubs across the North of England and in Scotland. In the light of the planned ‘Silicon Valley’ between Oxford and Cambridge, arguably there are already many burgeoning centres of technology excellence in Lancashire, Humberside, and Newcastle and of course the strategic interconnection point in Manchester.
Zayo Europe’s network brings a Northern Silicon Valley significant benefits:
- Diverse, high-performance fibre routes
- Greater network resilience and choice for customers
- Seamless access to UK and European markets
With Zayo Europe on-site, customers gain improved performance and more flexibility – underpinned by future-ready infrastructure.
What’s the 2025 outlook?
Highlighting Manchester as Europe’s fastest-growing digital city, it is a top choice for technology professionals. The city’s housing market is now considered a top performer for property price growth and the population is growing. Government incentives for tech companies to settle and expand in Manchester have resulted in a thriving digital ecosystem. Additionally, Manchester universities have enjoyed significant growth also over the past decade. The University of Manchester and Rolls-Royce have a long-standing partnership focused on research and innovation in areas such as nuclear technology, advanced materials, and engine efficiency. All this growth and digital vibrancy equates to a gravity well for bandwidth!
In Manchester Digital’s 2025 Sector Insight Report; it says that tech business leaders saw the top two most promising opportunities as Digital Transformation – increasing demand for digital solutions across industries, and Global Market Access – expanding into international markets. Additional importance was seen for Innovation Hubs – the emergence of dedicated tech hubs fostering collaboration and growth.
We’re also seeing that over the next two years, IP Transit demand is poised to experience big changes and varied growth rates, shaped by regional developments, policy initiatives, and technological advancements.
Investing in Manchester
Continued investment is set to further position Manchester as a leading tech hub, with the Manchester Digital Campus starting construction next year. The exciting ‘Sister’ project announced its first customer in September, Sister is a new science and technology district that aims to be the national centre for science and technology, creating 1000s of jobs and an innovation ecosystem that promotes cross-sector pollination, contributing around £1.5 billion to the economy every year in Manchester.
In 2023, Zayo Europe announced the launch of the fastest direct network route connecting Manchester to New York. The route avoids backhauling to the busy global Internet hubs of London and Paris, thus reducing transatlantic round-trip time, enabling a better user experience for our service provider customers in the UK North. As a Tier 1 Carrier, we seamlessly connect the UK and the rest of Europe to the world.
Today, thanks to our Data Centre partnerships and AltNet & ISP customers, one in 6 households in the UK uses the Zayo Europe network every day.
What about the rural North?
Greater Manchester boasts 94% gigabit broadband coverage. Outside of the cities, ISPs such as B4RN have been closing the rural digital divide. Their CEO, Tom Rigg, has talked about how Zayo Europe supported them; “Our founders’ experience meant we already understood the benefits of working with Zayo Europe and its dark fibre infrastructure available in our region, so we partnered right from the beginning and are still subscribed to the service on the same cable 12 years later!”
A digital world that includes everyone
The government recently published its Digital Inclusion Action Plan, saying, “Digital technologies are already woven into the fabric of our society. The internet age has left no part of our lives untouched: from the schools where our children are taught, to the jobs we do and the ways we choose to spend our free time. As scientific progress continues apace in the decades to come, its influence will be felt ever more profoundly. Access to technology and the skills to use it effectively will, in turn, become an ever more powerful factor in shaping the life chances of our citizens.”
The goal of the plan is to make sure everyone can be included in our digital world.
As such, Zayo is proud to be providing the high-speed, high availability infrastructure to communities and businesses, directly and indirectly throughout the UK.
Discover more about our commitment to solving your connectivity challenges and how we can support your customers’ experiences through some of our success stories.
Come talk to us at the Connected North event – we’re excited to meet you!
