Manchester to get 100Mbit/s optical fibre network

Fibre provider Geo to roll out fibre-to-the-premises to businesses and homes

Up to 55,000 workers could benefit from the new network

Fibre networks provider Geo has been awarded a contract by the Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) and public sector partnership Corridor Manchester to deploy fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) to 500 business and 1,000 homes.

The rollout will be phased over the next 12 months.

Initially 200 homes and businesses will benefit from the network, which will be placed alongside a gas pipeline in the hope that this will make it less susceptible to breakages.

Geo chief executive Chris Smedley said: "The rollout will be able to offer a fully symmetrical service, meaning identical upload and download capacity of 100Mbit/s."

Smedley said that this would be a true open access network, allowing ISPs to use either an active product provided by Geo or a passive solution.

"Because it's point-to-point fibre, a passive solution would allow ISPs to light the fibre themselves and provide their own services," he added.

MDDA is attracting a lot of media-oriented businesses to the city and future tranches of network capacity will be led by demand.

Jackie Potter, chief executive, Corridor Manchester, said: “The installation of the new fibre optic cables will create a new infrastructure on the Corridor [the Oxford Road area of the city] that will not only deliver much faster broadband speeds but through the open access network allow organisations, businesses and even individuals develop and test their own ideas for uses of the new technology without being held back by current limitations.”

The businesses and institutions that are set to benefit from the network employ 55,000 people – 18 per cent of the city’s workforce – and generate £2.8bn a year.