Infrastructure change as network traffic edges out to regions
Virgin Media Business Wholesale (VMBW), the fixed wholesale connectivity arm of Virgin Media O2 Business, has doubled its fibre capacity to South Wales to 96 fibres as the COVID effect continues to re-shape Britain’s fixed and mobile network infrastructure.
Telcos and operators can buy the new fibre capacity from Virgin Media Business Wholesale via Ethernet or Optical Services or can be bought as Dark Fibre.
The fibre reinforcements were called in as brythonic business has boomed among the hyperscalers, data centre operators and digital creatives of the ‘de cymru’ region better known as South Wales. On the other side of the Severn River from England, South Wales is now viewed as the UK’s second major data centre region after London. Virgin Media Wholesale said this essential connectivity upgrade provides a significant opportunity for those looking to expand their capacity across Wales and the south-east of England and capitalise on the secure and resilient fibre network built by Virgin Media O2 Business. It claims the 190,000km network, largely acquired by acquisition of cable operators and telcos, is the largest in the UK.
The added capacity will support demand from wholesale partners on either side of the estuary and cut delivery times for customer projects, VMBW claimed. An early beneficiary is Vantage Data Centers CWL1, whose 270MW, 135,000 square meter campus near Cardiff is Europe’s largest data centre campus, which has many hyperscale and colocation customers.
“[This] will contribute significantly to our commitment [in] providing future-proofed, highly scalable data centre solutions to customers,” said Justin Jenkins, UK Vantage Data Centers’ COO, “we can now provide a range of new services to multinational systems integrators, as well as the many small and medium enterprises, FinTech, pharmaceutical, government, retail and engineering organisations that underpin Wales’s thriving digital economy.”
Vantage’s CWL1 campus has been a strategic point-of-presence (PoP) on the Virgin Media network for a decade, and the Severn Bridge fibre network upgrade marks a new era in the longstanding connection between the two companies, said Diego Tedesco, Wholesale Fixed Director at Virgin Media O2 Business.
“Last year Virgin Media O2 made a commitment to invest £10bn as part of its mission to upgrade the UK. Building out our fibre from Vantage’s CWL1 campus is one of the significant early investments,” said Tedesco. The fibre upgrade will support the high-speed data transmissions needed for high-performance computing systems, hosting private and hybrid clouds and business apps that need instant response times.
In the UK the M4 motorway provides the physical infrastructure connecting the transporting creative talent with London and Heathrow, the world’s biggest airport. The combination of COVID restrictions and the link to the M4 corridor has created a boom in digital business activity in South Wales. The M4 and the new 96 lane fibre optic data superhighway both run on the Prince of Wales Severn Bridge (see pic) which connects England to Wales.