Racal’s Ring Will Clear Docklands Bottleneck

The UK’s top independent provider of
carrier services Racal Telecom
has commissioned Phase One of a 25 kilometre fibre optic ring around
Docklands.

The ring is intended to alleviate the bottleneck experienced by
many ISPs at this “nerve centre” of Internet interconnections in
London.

Docklands is the physical location of Telehouse, the main London carrier
interconnection hub. However, with the new fibre ring, other new carrier
hubs — including Telehouse 2000, TeleCity and the London Switch — will
also support the delivery of transatlantic carrier traffic.

“Faced with the mounting pressures of cost, space and operational
inflexibility,
ISPs now have an alternative in Racal Telecom for trunk capacity
interconnection
to carrier hotels and Internet exchange points,” said Racal Telecom’s
international carrier services director, Trent Holmes.

“Strategically, the upgrading of the DWDM core to 40Gbit/s and the
commissioning of the Docklands ring positions Racal Telecom as the principal independent provider of backhaul for transatlantic traffic,” he added.

“On the completion of the project, this facility will make a major contribution to overcoming the technical complexities and costs that face every overseas carrier seeking a presence in the deregulated UK market.”

Up to now, ISPs have needed to co-locate their server “farms” and
interconnect
equipment at the extremely busy Internet hubs. This will change, says Racal,
and ISPs will be able to withdraw their physical presence out of London to
regional sites. There are more than 360 non-aligned ISPs in the UK who could
benefit from the increased capacity.

Racal Telecom has a joint venture with Metromedia Fiber Networks (MFN) of
the
U.S. named ION which allows it to provide backhaul services on both sides of
the Atlantic. In the UK, Racal Telecom operates a low-cost, high-capacity
fibre optic network of 7,000 route kilometres, most of it running alongside
the UK railway infrastructure.