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Colchester
Ultra Ready for Business
Making All the
Right Connections
World-class connectivity is essential if Colchester
is to realise its ambition of providing high-quality
jobs for its growing population and will act as
a vital building block for future investment
and regeneration.
Colchester Borough Council has installed an Ultrafast
Broadband (UFBB) network that is transforming connectivity
for business in the town centre. Ultrafast Broadband offers
subscribers some of the fastest upload and download
speeds in the UK – more than 10 times faster than Superfast
Broadband, putting Colchester town centre among the
best-connected places in the country.
Commenting on the project, Mike Kiely, Broadband expert and
Founder of The Bit Commons, said: “The target set was to create
conditions where Colchester Businesses have unrestricted
access to the full potential of connectivity enabled by optical
fibre, matching the services, choice and prices offered in
places like Hong Kong and South Korea. The approach
adopted by Colchester Borough Council to invest in passive
infrastructure will typically allow customers to buy 100Mbps
symmetrical service for less than £100 a month from a choice
of providers, with the ability to purchase dark fibre or 1Gbps
services should that be needed.”
The Council’s ambition is to expand the Ultrafast network
to other key regeneration areas and economic growth
zones during 2016/17, particularly the Northern Gateway
regeneration area adjacent to the A12.
The connectivity the network provides will be available to all
service providers on an open-access, non-exclusive basis.
The pure-fibre network is future-proofed, and will be able to
meet the demanding requirements of forthcoming technology,
including 5G mobile telephony.
Colchester’s regeneration areas providing the focus of some £3bn investment.