Manchester to London link

SSE Enterprise Telecoms is launching Manchester LIGHTNOW, a new high-capacity, ultra-resilient optical networking service, providing 1Gb and 10Gb wavelength connectivity between nine of the busiest data centres in the Manchester and between dedicated LIGHTNOW data centres in London and Manchester. Manchester LIGHTNOW follows the latest announcement of SSE Enterprise Telecoms bringing seven new Manchester-based data centres on-net and builds on the success of the LIGHTNOW service in the London area.

The Manchester data centres will benefit from 1Gb and 10Gb optical wavelengths between commercial data centres, with sub 1ms latency, which can be rapidly provisioned within a week. SSE Enterprise Telecoms is offering customers flexible contract durations which start at three months, a zero charge set-up option, in-life circuit moves between any of the on-net data centres real time, and 24/7 support, all at extremely competitive rates.

“When we first launched our LIGHTNOW service, we were serving the demand from businesses for high capacity connectivity between data centres in London,” said Colin Sempill, managing director of SSE Enterprise Telecoms. “We could see that increasingly more data centre managers were choosing to use a combination of data centres to best suit the requirements of their data – whether that be high security, maximum availability or the need for speed – but they weren’t willing to compromise on service. These ‘pro-locators’, as we called them, are now emerging in Manchester too, most likely due to the booming business in the area and resulting increase in data, and they also require faster data centre links both within the Manchester area and to London.”

Manchester LIGHTNOW provides meshed connectivity in and around the city and on to London. It follows the original debut of the service in London, where SSE Enterprise Telecoms connects 21 of the busiest data centres. The original LIGHTNOW London service formed part of the extensive network expansion, dubbed Project Edge, which saw SSE Enterprise Telecoms increase the reach of its fibre network to more than 13,700km with a total of 234 points of presence, serving more than 200,000 metropolitan business postcodes, nationwide.

“The expansion of the LIGHTNOW service builds on its success in London and demonstrates SSE Enterprise Telecoms’ commitment to delivering ultra-high capacity connectivity services. Our ambition is to design a data centre portfolio that makes a real difference to our customers, supported by a network infrastructure that has no tolerance for downtime,” concluded Sempill.

The Manchester data centres connected by SSE Enterprise Telecoms are as follows: DataCentred, Dock 10 – Media City, M247, Telecity Group (Williams House), Telecity Group (Reynolds House), Telecity Group (Synergy House), UKFast – MaNOC 6, Telecity Group (Joule House) and Telecity Group (Kilburn House).

LIGHTNOW is powered by Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, equipped with WaveLogic coherent optics. The service leverages the 6500’s ROADM bridge features, which ensure full agility for the provisioning and routing of wavelengths, underpinning the “wavelength in a week” service pledge.