Exponential-e, the next-generation network and applications provider today announced that it is working closely with Openreach to bring super-fast telecoms services to the small business community. Today marks the conclusion of laboratory trials, which have successfully demonstrated the ability to support multiple services and QoS, and the start of live trials with three customers.
Exponential-e is entirely focused on servicing the needs of business customers. Unencumbered by the overheads associated with serving residential consumers, Exponential-e has always been able to pass on its lower cost base to its customers. However underlying infrastructure costs associated with fibre-based business telecoms services has meant that even Exponential-e has found it difficult to make such services affordable for the smaller business.
Openreach’s role is to maintain and improve the underlying telecommunications network in the UK for use by the major telecoms companies in their quest to provide better and faster services to residential and business customers. It is investing £2.5bn in a fibre-optic infrastructure to deliver superior network speeds and performance. Openreach provides access to this network to communications providers , including downstream BT divisions such as BT Retail, on an equivalence-of-access basis to enable these providers to develop their own innovative products using the basic infrastructure as a key ingredient.
Lee Wade, Managing Director, Exponential-e- said: ” We‘re excited about the opportunities that UK-wide fibre deployment offers the small to medium-sized enterprise sector and home office environment. We’ve championed the cause of business customers for many years by bringing fibre-based business services to market at aggressive prices. We now have an opportunity to meet the needs of those businesses that up to now have been unable to afford the superior performance characteristics of fibre products”.
Laboratory testing by Exponential-e put Openreach’s ability to support voice, data and video services simultaneously to the test and also explored whether each service could be allocated individual performance guarantees. Once the testing phase has been completed successfully, Exponential-e will be able to bring new services to market quickly as it already has its equipment installed in many of the Openreach exchanges from which the services will be offered.
Mukesh Bavisi, Director of Networks & Services comments: “We’ve shown in the lab that we can create insulated, highly secure VLANs to support different services and quality characteristics. It’s these features that are vitally important in the business world”.
“We are now moving onto real trials with live customers. We already have new business applications in the pipeline designed to make doing business as a small enterprise so much easier and cost-effective. We believe that the new fibre infrastructure presents a significant opportunity for Exponential-e to help small businesses take advantage of services delivered from the cloud”.
