NORTHAMPTON is celebrating its one-year anniversary as one of the UK’s first Gigabit Cities, thanks to a partnership between CityFibre and local ISP, dbfb, which brought next-generation, full-fibre connectivity to the city’s businesses for the very first time last year.
Since then, businesses along the 45km fibre network have been able to wave good bye to their creaking copper-based broadband services and say hello to reliable end-to-end fibre connectivity (an asset currently available to just three per cent of UK premises). This has in turn, not only provided access to broadband speeds capable of up to 100 times faster than the national average and near unlimited bandwidth – it has unlocked business growth by driving increased efficiency and productivity while supporting new revenue opportunities such as e-commerce.
The need for a future proofed digital infrastructure has been recognised locally by Northamptonshire County Council, which, in a bid to stimulate growth, has set an ambitious target to make superfast broadband available across the county by the end of 2017.
As well as securing an £800k funding boost for the Northamptonshire Digital Enhancement project to improve broadband connectivity and develop digital innovation, the county council has also identified e-commerce as a key growth opportunity for local businesses, given that many still operate without a broadband connection.
Bluefish, one of the UK’s leading office product companies, is one of over 50 businesses connected to CityFibre’s Gigabit City network. Mark Heath, managing director of Bluefish said: “Over the past two years we have seen a large shift to online purchases, however our systems were running too slow. In January we joined Northampton’s Gigabit City Network and secured a full-fibre connection at the same cost as our lease line, but 10 times faster. This transition has not only seen an improvement in the productivity of our staff, it has enabled us to reduce our operating costs as we can update our online catalogue in-house and we’re able to drive transactions through flash sales – something we were unable to do previously.”
Digital communication specialists RJDM have also joined the network. Paul Thurland, managing director, said: “Since joining the CityFibre network we’ve definitely seen improvements, especially across our animation offering. Rendering is a very processor-heavy function and most animation studios will want to use cloud based on demand rendering services which rely on high speed connectivity. We are a digital business operating at the leading edge of technology so it was a vital investment for us now and for our future connectivity needs.”
More recently, dbfb has provided a free connection to Northamptonshire’s Cynthia Spencer Hospice which will now make it even easier for patients in the hospice to connect seamlessly with loved ones via video messaging apps such as Skype or FaceTime.
Given the central role of digital connectivity across business, public service and our lives at home, Gigabit City status has been credited as contributing to wider economic growth, impacting positively on a town or city’s ability to attract new start-ups, inward investors and ultimately, jobs.
For more information about Northampton’s Gigabit City project, visit: www.cityfibre.com/northampton