SCOTLAND’S FIRST NEXT GENERATION TELECOMS NETWORK TO SLASH LATENCY

Scotland’s businesses and public sector bodies could see a cut in network
delays of up to 87%, saving time and money, with the launch of the first
Scottish-owned next generation telecoms network.

Commsworld, a Scottish-based telecoms company, has developed its own
high-speed business-only network which will accommodate extremely fast voice
and data services across Scotland.

The next generation network (NGN) – powered by Fluency, Commsworld’s newly
acquired Internet Service Provider – will allow Scottish companies to better
compete against business rivals in the UK and Europe by providing quicker
access to data and avoiding ‘bottlenecks’ on existing networks.

Fluency  is fully launching Scotland’s first owned and operated NGN next
month and the upgraded network will provide wholesale Layer 2 Ethernet
services via LLU and Datacentre footprint across the length and breadth of
Scotland.

The key technical aspects are: –

– Fluency operate a fully optical core network in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow
and Aberdeen based on carrier-grade Juniper equipment designed for super low
latency performance.

– LLU footprint in city-centre PoPs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen with
more to follow later this year.

– Wholesale Layer 2 Ethernet will be available in the form of Dedicated
Fibre, FTTC (GEA) and a new exclusive (up to) 8-Pair EFM service.

– Service providers can interconnect any of our Core PoPs to provide their
customers with a unique access portfolio into their own networks.

– Ethernet WANs and Point to Point services can be configured across the
network using a mix-and-match of access technologies.

– Fluency are vendor-agnostic and operate Scottish interconnects with
Virgin, BTWholesale, C&W, TalkTalk and others.

– Have developed growing relationships with Datacentre providers in
Scotland in an effort to be on-net wherever customers need breakout for
cloud or colocation services.

– The network is built for Voice.  All Ethernet services have multiple
Class Of Service (CoS) markings to manage Quality of Service.  All L3 access
is natively QoS enabled.

Fluency is also spearheading support for Scotland’s own internet exchange
point (IXP).  Working closely with LINX, datacentre operators and other
service providers in Scotland, they are driving an initiative to build
common Internet infrastructure in Scotland.  Fluency MD, Charlie Boisseau,
has helped setup LINX/ScotGov and UKNOF meetings to bring these issues onto
the agenda for Scottish Internet businesses.

NGNs transport all information services, including telephony, video calls,
data sharing, instant messaging, voicemail, email and text on a single
high-speed network.

Commsworld believes its new telecoms network, initially serving Glasgow,
Edinburgh and Aberdeen, could give Scottish companies a competitive edge by
improving efficiency, disaster recovery and access to cloud-based services.

While organisations often focus on download speed to deliver fast
applications, another key challenge in today’s marketplace is lag or latency
– the time taken between a computer user requesting an action and it
actually happening. This delay is a particular problem with wide area
networks (WANs), which transmit data over long distances.

“A good analogy is with what happens with a hosepipe,” explained Commsworld
CEO Richard Nicol. “Download speed, which is related to bandwidth, is like
the amount that comes out when the water is running but latency is the delay
before the first drop comes out.”

On network PCs, when users input information through keyboard and mouse
actions to remote terminal servers, the impact of latency can be very
noticeable. Charlie Boisseau, MD of Fluency, added: “Using MS Word over a
high latency link would literally slow down the speed you can type. File
sharing across corporate networks can slow to a crawl and database
applications can be utterly unusable.

“You see your mouse movements slow down, and every time you click on
something there is a visible delay in the time it takes for the change to
appear. Anyone looking to implement a wide area network really needs to take
latency seriously. It can make a huge difference to many business
applications.”

The newly upgraded Fluency network is optimised for the Scottish market.
It can offer latency of just two milliseconds on connections between
Edinburgh and Glasgow, compared with up to 15 milliseconds from non-Scottish
telecoms companies, or telcos.

It also boasts latency of 9ms, 50% lower than competitors on data traffic
between Central Scotland and London and 4ms between Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Commsworld says it has identified substantial demand from Scottish firms and
public bodies which have been complaining about the cost and performance of
services provided by some of the larger Telcos.

But equally important, claims Nicol, is that Commsworld can promise higher
quality service and support to Scottish businesses. He argues that because
Scotland is such a small market for the big UK and multi-national players
they devote less resource to servicing the Scottish market than Commsworld,
potentially meaning greater delays and disruption if things go wrong.

He added: “The big telcos have a very high threshold for what’s an
acceptable level of latency.  As applications become more sensitive, this
needs to be taken seriously.  We’re the first in Scotland to do that. The
existing networks aren’t well organised or optimised for the Scottish market
as some of the big boys don’t appear to consider Scotland big enough to
bother about.”

The new offering marks a significant change of direction for Commsworld as a
telecoms provider – no longer just re-selling services from one of the big
three telcos like a broker but running its own network and focusing on high
tech solutions and traditional local customer service.