Happy Anniversary
We’re celebrating our one year independence anniversary, as a stand-alone leading Pan-European fibre infrastructure owner operator, and a Tier 1 carrier – improving the way we serve and support your business.
As a carrier’s carrier, we’ve evolved from 100G being the standard to delivering multiples of 400G as the norm, and this growth acceleration happened at a pace never before seen.
For you, our European independence has provided both local accountability and driven network operational and service delivery improvements. Our superpower for providing best-in-class, industry-leading service assurance is the fact we build it, run it and support it ourselves. This means we can make the distinctive claim that we own our customers’ experience end-to-end.
How we’re now different
Independence makes us more agile, but unlike incumbent Telco’s we remain infrastructure focused to ensure your data travels on the most modern, high-capacity network available whether it’s across Dark Fibre, Wavelength, or IP Transit. We cover all the high-bandwidth locations, but what really sets us apart is our engaging people; their expertise, their energy and their enthusiasm to help your business thrive.
Crystal Ball Gazing
Creating connectivity capability in markets our customers need next, is core to what we do.
We’ve been doing data connectivity mapping since the earliest days of the Internet, to build quality core fibre infrastructure networks ahead of future demand.
Deciding where to build next is an art
It comes down to balancing three main ingredients;
- We start by listening – to thousands of conversations with customers like you.
- We bring in decades of industry expertise.
- We analyse market shifts to make informed investments in the right places.
In the breakneck-paced IoT’s world with exploding AI workloads, evolving cloud strategies, and ever-higher resolution media, building the data highways that carry what’s next is educated conjecture and ultimately an act of alchemy – turning a fibre base made of thin strands of glass into ships of gold, not just in the financial aspect but also in knowledge. Your need for robust, future-ready infrastructure has never been greater and we’re here to ensure your connectivity keeps pace.
So where are we looking to next?
We’ve recently entered a new European market, which we’ll announce more details on soon. Wherever your business is headed, we’re building the infrastructure to get you there!
Behind our expansion, what’s the insights driving us?
Product Insight: since summer last year, our fully 400G-enabled European network has seen a 20% rise in orders. That means more businesses like yours are demanding higher capacity and faster delivery, and we’re scaling to meet it.
Customer Insight: Hyperscalers are still taking the lion’s share of bandwidth, but we’ve also seen an increase in demand for our high capacity 400G network with growing app and social platforms for entertainment, e-commerce and web-service companies.
Data Centre Insight: We’re witnessing a time of enormous data centre growth driven by AI, ML, cloud demand, repatriation from cloud to hybrid cloud, and increases in workplaces and remote working. More and more data centre capacity is required both in the traditional FLAP areas (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris), and now also in more remote areas where the immense power needed for AI workloads is taking the compute to the source of power.
Data Centres are now classified as critical national infrastructure (CNI). This means that standards, and availability are crucial because data centres underpin so much of what we need to function as a society. However, what isn’t classified currently as CNI is the equally critical connectivity they need to function. Which is a bit like classifying your heart as critical but not the arteries that feed it. We’re committed to delivering the high-performance connections these critical hubs rely on.
AI Growth Zones: Additional impacts are Government growth programmes such as ‘AI Gigafactories’, an EU initiative to build massive facilities for Government and general workloads. AI Growth Zones are the UK equivalent. Politically charged to drive skills, employment and economic growth.
What’s interesting is that all the discussion has been about land, power and water. What’s been forgotten is the equally vital connectivity. This is particularly pertinent when you consider the new data centres will be in new and different locations from traditional locations amply served with connectivity infrastructure.
We’re already engaged in these transformative projects,We’re establishing specialised teams utilising our people who are experts in data centres, AI, high-capacity connectivity and large solution engineering.
Government Regulation: The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), or the Corporate Sustainability reporting Directive (mean that more large enterprises especially in finance), required modern, available and sustainable facilities with better backup and even more bulletproof DR planning.
Environmental Issues: Data Centres consume more power than the airline industry. As such renewable energy sources are critical to the sustainability agenda especially as the world invests to accommodate AI. This means more emerging cities and rural and coastal locations will be used for massive new developments, and the compute and network connectivity has to follow.
Geopolitical landscape: Security challenges arising from global conflicts and disruptions have placed data sovereignty high on the agenda, prompting governments to invest in domestic data centre facilities, networks, and to enforce increasingly localised regulations.For you, that means increasing pressure to keep data secure, localised, and compliant. We’re building the networks to make that possible.
The road ahead
We’re living in unstable times environmentally and geopolitically. But one thing is clear: your demand for secure, fast, scalable connectivity will only grow.
Like the underground honey fungus network (one of Earth’s fastest-growing organisms) connectivity is expanding invisibly, but powerfully. We’re building that invisible infrastructure with you, for whatever comes next.