O2 has awarded a 15-year contract to Zayo to provide and manage a fully resilient core fibre network throughout the UK. The nationwide fibre network, which uses the acquired Geo Networks infrastructure, spans from Glasgow to Salisbury, comprises more than 4,500 route km and incorporates 19 connectivity points around the UK.
Under the agreement, O2’s underlying infrastructure will shift from SDH and Ethernet-based managed services infrastructure to a dedicated fibre optic network which connects mobile switching sites across the network. The new infrastructure will provide O2 with flexible capacity to accommodate increasing demand for mobile data driven by its 4G rollout and increasingly digital customer base. The national network will incorporate towns and cities around the UK including Slough, Croydon, Newcastle and London.
“With the O2 4G network now covering over 260 towns and cities and half of the UK population, there has been unprecedented growth in the amount of data traffic transmitted across the network,” said Adrian Di Meo, Chief Technology Officer for O2. “A year after the launch of our 4G network, it has already carried a total of 5,400 Terabytes of 4G data, which is the equivalent of eight million hours of HD video.”
- Earlier this year, Zayo Group acquired Geo Networks, a London-based dark fiber provider, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition added over 2,100 route miles to Zayo’s European network, and connectivity to 587 on-net buildings. Geo owned and operated a high capacity fiber network in the UK, providing managed networks, dark fiber and co-location services to a variety of high-bandwidth sectors including media companies, service providers, financial services, data centers and gaming organizations.
Geo’s 100-route mile London network is housed in the London sewer system, which minimizes the threat of physical faults, boosting reliability and security, and enabling rapid deployment with minimum disruption. The network reaches 130 data centers across the UK. Geo also operates a diverse optical fiber subsea system, East-West Ring, providing diverse connectivity to Dublin, a strategic hub for data centers and cloud service providers.
