NYnet brings benefits of high fibre diet to the EU

Broadband initiative to highlight how optical fibre deployment boosts rural businesses and the public sector

Businesses in rural areas pay more for network access than in urban areas

The North Yorkshire-based NYnet public-private sector partnership has been chosen as consultants to a major new European Commission initiative known as the B3 Regions: Regions for Better Broadband Connection (PDF).

Designed to improve network connectivity to the internet and other IT systems throughout the European Union, the initiative launches today in York, and will run for 26 months sharing best practice from eight other EU-based partner organisations. It will be funded to the tune of €3.5m.

NYnet said that the initiative seeks to "redress the imbalance and combat the documented social and economic disadvantages of poor internet access by transferring existing good practices, as demonstrated by NYnet, throughout the EU member states".

NYnet was chosen after its implementation of an optical fibre network which allowed service providers to supply broadband to about 330,000 residential customers, and 50,000 small to medium sized firms and small office/home office locations, in the region, covering Craven, Hambleton, Harrogate, Richmondshire, Ryedale, Scarborough, Selby and York.

"We have a ring of 12 core points of presence [POPs] located in North Yorkshire's main market towns, connected by optical fibre with a total bandwidth capacity of 32Gbit/s," said Andy Lister, marketing director at NYnet.

"If we exceed that, I know that Cisco has electronics that can up that to 320Gbit/s on the fibre we have by just swapping out the end electronics devices. "

Lister added that NYnet's 12 POPs are connected to another 28 smaller POPs which could supply bandwidth from 100Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s to public sector sites and business parks, which would then pass on bandwidth between 2Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s to end users.

NYnet would provide better value for public sector services than is currently obtainable, and farm out excess capacity to the private sector, according to the organisation.

NYnet brings benefits of high fibre diet to the EU

Broadband initiative to highlight how optical fibre deployment boosts rural businesses and the public sector

Lister explained that one of the problems for rural areas is that businesses pay more for network access than in urban areas. "A business in, say, Scarborough, which is no backwater, could pay between two and eight times more for services than a similar one in Leeds," he said.

Lister added that having good network access benefits the whole community in the long term. "Connecting the rural business parks near our POPs means we can provide connectivity at prices comparable with those in urban areas, which means you can set up a business here in an area which is nice to live in. It also reduces the chances of our graduates leaving North Yorkshire and moving to the south east," he said.

B3 Regions will tackle the difficulties of implementing remote broadband infrastructure, following EU research which found that only 60-70 per cent of remote/rural businesses and households in the EU have broadband, compared with over 90 per cent in urban areas.

"NYnet was chosen because of the extremely innovative way it overcame the infrastructure and access issues related to rural broadband in North Yorkshire, " said B3 Regions head of legal Roberto Moriondo.

"This model could now provide a solution to help resolve the issues of social inclusion in similarly remote areas elsewhere."

NYnet was formed in March 2007 with £4m of start-up cash from the Yorkshire Forward regional development association and £1.1m from the EU.

A backhaul network connecting 12 POPs has been created with tiered service level agreements to providers.