European backbone network

Our advanced, 7000km European fibre network runs through the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. Wholly-owned, it ensures reliable, cost-effective connectivity that is fully supported and secure.

Network reach:

• 40 Point of Presence (PoP) in 19 key European cities
• US Gateway in New York
• 6,800 kilometers of fibre (G.655 fibre from Lucent)
• Based on 72-fibre cables on the terrestrial sections and 48-fibre sea-cables
• 2 submarine cables between UK and mainland Europe (G.654 fibre from Sumitomo)
• Trans Atlantic capacity from multiple sub-sea cable operators enable us to provide connectivity between Europe and USA
• Spare fibre for future growth and customer use

Transmission network

• Based on equipment from Nortel networks and Huawei deploying DWDM technology with SDH transmission standards and highly resilient bi-directional switched rings (BLSRs)
• The Long-Haul Network provides full protection with geographical diversity or unprotected wavelengths as required
• The SDH layer consists of overlay rings at STM16 and STM64 line rates.
• The protection mechanism used in STM16 rings is 2 Fibre, Multiplexer Shared Protection Ring (2F MS-SPRing), providing high availability.
• Latest generation ASON ready SDH platforms support Ethernet over SDH or WDM as well as traditional private circuit services.
• Supports SDH based leased line services from 2Mbps to 2.5 Gbps.
• The DWDM layer provides optical channels at:
  - 1 Gbps Ethernet,
  - 2.5 Gbps/s
  - 10 Gbps/s Ethernet or STM64
  - 40Gbps planned for this year
  

IP Network

• Juniper and Cisco based
• Internet (transit) connections at 5 separate locations
• Peering in London, Zurich, Paris and Amsterdam
• The Pan-European IP Network supports MPLS VPNs

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