In 2013, the Federation of Small Businesses expressed its concern that a large number of business parks and industrial estates in Northamptonshire, England, were being overlooked by the big providers. At these so-called ‘Jurassic Parks’, slow broadband, no faster than a dial-up connection, was the norm. The only way to increase speeds for businesses was willing to pay for expensive leased lines, which was beyond the reach of many smaller firms and so an alternative was needed.
WarwickNet established a partnership with the local authority and worked with the Federation of Small Businesses to identify which areas were most in need of network infrastructure.
Extremely slow
“Originally backed by Northamptonshire County Council, the initiative aimed to tackle problems facing businesses across the county: poor connectivity, resulting in extremely slow broadband,” explains Ben King, CEO at WarwickNet. Ben has been helping to deliver the rollout of superfast broadband in Northamptonshire since his company became involved with the project in 2014. “These slow connection speeds were particularly evident in some of the county’s business parks and this is where we have focused most of our attention with Northamptonshire; working with both the council and the federation of small businesses to identify those who were in most need of attention.”
“Since beginning work in the county two years ago we have connected nine business parks and industrial estates in Northampton, Corby and Kettering, offering a wide range of bespoke services – from superfast broadband up to 100 Mb/s to high-capacity leased lines up to 1 Gb/s, by deploying a mixture of technologies, including Fibre-to-the-Cabinet and Fibre-to-the-Premises.”
Ongoing rollout
“We also offer tailored multi-site solutions. On the whole, our work throughout Northamptonshire has been successful and extremely well received, however we have learned a lot on the way and have redeveloped our practices throughout the journey. Since our work in Northamptonshire began, we’ve ensured that more than 300 businesses have access to business-grade broadband, and we plan to continue our roll out to a number of additional sites. Northamptonshire is now one of England’s most connected counties, second only to our home county of Warwickshire, and we look forward to continuing our work in the area!”
The UK government’s Department for Culture Media & Sport, responsible for the government’s superfast broadband rollout, praised Northamptonshire County Council’s approach to encouraging private sector investment.
“This initiative to get telecoms providers to invest commercially in the county is helping us to achieve our Superfast Northamptonshire ambition without the need for public funding – getting businesses connected is a key priority for us,” says Sarah Naylor, Northamptonshire County Council’s programme overview manager for broadband.
Superfast Northamptonshire
By building points-of-presence directly onto estates, WarwickNet delivers a complete range of connectivity solutions over its resilient national network, based around a 10-Gigabit Ethernet core.
At present, the broadband service is available at Waterside and Rushmills, Grange Park, Corbygate Business Park, Weldon North, Willowbrook East and Weldon South Industrial Estates, Corby Business Centre, Kettering Venture Park and Telford Way Industrial Estate. The next sites to benefit are: Brackmills Industrial Estate, Moulton Park, Phoenix Parkway and Earlstrees, St James and Park Farm Industrial Estates.
www.superfastnorthamptonshire.net
Ben King with Sarah Naylor, Northamptonshire County Council’s programme overview manager and Andrew Smeaton, Business Park Management for Corbygate Management Ltd.