Cityfibre now available

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hello everyone,

 

just to let you all know Schools Broadband (and other ISP's if they've the agreements in place) are able to offer access to Cityfibres high speed Ethernet and GPON services to the majority of their connected cities throughout the UK.

 

Costs for high speed bandwidth (500Mbit and 1Gbit options in particular) generally wipe the floor with Virgin Media and BT Openreach based circuits so we can be extremely competitive if you're lucky enough to be on net and in one of their connected cities. These services are same speed upload and download and come with guaranteed SLA's.

 

Installation for Fibre Ethernet is FOC is you're 75m or under from their existing ducting and lead time 45 working days.

 

We can also backhaul their connectivity into our cloud based filtering and security platform just as we can any other carrier in the UK so sites can also be easily added to a MPLS or VPLS WAN with other connectivity providers.

 

So if you're looking to take advantage of cloud based applications which Google, Microsoft and other large content providers offer and want near wire speed connectivity as if the services were hosted onsite then its really now very affordable to do so.

 

Cities initially available are

 

Edingburgh

Leeds

Northampton

Milton Keynes

Bristol

Reading

Bracknell

Slough

Maidenhead

Leicester

Nottingham

Sheffield

Aberdeen

Huddersfield

Coventry

 

with more cities coming online in the next 6 months or so.

 

So if you want the fastest connections available at the best prices on the market then let us (or another Cityfibre partner) know and we'd be happy to give you a quick quote..

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[GTX]

We have ours installed at the end of this month. We are paying £299 for 100mb. I was surprised when he told me a 1GB connection is only £499.

 

Also, If you have 2 sites on CityFibre you can get a free 10GB connection between the 2 sites!

[synaesthesia]

Aye, we're looking at it as a possibility either with SB or others. Already have a 10Gbit link between our sites which funnily enough is on cityfiber but not linked to the actual network, and is over 75m from the nearest main haul. = EXPENSIVE

[EXA_Mark]

We have ours installed at the end of this month. We are paying £299 for 100mb. I was surprised when he told me a 1GB connection is only £499.

 

I've got some even better news for you. DarkLight, the service you are getting from Exa later this month, has been given a (not so) little boost. Your 100Mbps product is now 300Mbps for the same price

 

You would have found this out via a very nice email in the next few days, but given the conversation has come up here I thought I let you (and the other Edugeek users) a sneak peak so to speak.

 

DarkLight, unlike the CityFibre GPON offering (which is a contended 8:1 service, and asymmetrical) is, as you know, uncontended and symmetrical and as we control both ends of the fibre and have made it the most flexible connectivity product on the market. That's why we light the connection up at 10Gbps to start with (regardless of what speed you take), although we do have some customers (not schools) with 40Gbps optics already.

 

So our updated DarkLight product and this applies to all existing customers who will all be getting free upgrades over the next couple of weeks looks like this:

 

100Mbps at the equivalent of £299 per month is becoming 300Mbps for the same price

300Mbps at the equivalent of £349 per month is becoming 500Mbps for the same price

500Mbps at the equivalent of £399 per month is becoming 750Mbps for the same price

The 1Gbps product at the equivalent of £499 per month is staying the same for now, but we will have some REALLY exciting news for those customers very shortly,

 

And this is one of the massive advantages of DarkLight using Dark Fibre, we control it, and things like this are very quick to be able to do and all customers benefit not matter when they came on the network (and we don't make them sign a new contract for the upgrade, it just happens). And remember these speeds are guaranteed, not contended like GPON, and if you ever need an increase for a short time above that (for an event for instance) you can just give us a call and we can increase it whilst you are on the phone.

 

DarkLight, using Dark Fibre, is exclusive to Exa in the following areas. Leeds (City region, going up to Wetherby), Bradford, Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, Wakefield, Barnsley, Halifax/Calderdale, Huddersfield, Milton Keynes and Northampton, with a couple more DarkLight areas coming on very soon.

 

In the other areas, our Gigabit Basic and Gigabit Value services are available. These use the GPON variant so not as good as DarkLight, and certainly not as flexible, but still a lot better than other options.

Aberdeen,

Bracknell,

Bristol,

Cheltenham,

Coventry,

Edinburgh

Glasgow,

Gloucester,

Hull

Maidenhead,

Peterborough,

Reading,

Slough

Southend-on-Sea

York

[GTX]

Thats great Mark! Good job.

 

We have the install date coming this week i hope so we can get using it soon!

 

Rick

Edited October 3, 2017 by GTX

[Katy]

Wonder how easy it would be to get the school to move to somewhere with decent fibre....

[GTX]

Wonder how easy it would be to get the school to move to somewhere with decent fibre....

 

Wouldnt hurt to try

[Tesla]

Hmm, our supplier is (kinda) one of the partners of CityFibre.... we use e2bn which in itself uses Easynet (which is the partner)....

[EXA_Mark]

If any of you would like to know if you are on, or close to the network for DarkLight or the GPON service, just PM me your postcode and I can tell you straight away, because as a Dark Fibre provider we have access to the full network map around the UK, as well as knowledge of future builds. I promise you will get no follow on sales calls or information (unless you want them!)

[EXA_Mark]

Hi Tesla,

 

There are huge chunks of E2BN market areas that are covered, so if you are on net (PM me the post code if you want me to check) they, or another provider, say Exa Education may well be able to connect you via the GPON variant

[nathan]

Great news....if anything like this were available in our schools.

 

I think we should start a petition to get the government (Ofcom) to force suppliers such as BT, Virgin etc to make these services available to all educational establishments.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Great news....if anything like this were available in our schools.

 

I think we should start a petition to get the government (Ofcom) to force suppliers such as BT, Virgin etc to make these services available to all educational establishments.

 

it will at some point happen.

 

The competition authority just upheld a complaint by BT Openreach against Ofcom to not force BT Openreach to offer their own Dark Fibre product to other communication providers. This would have given a similar service to Cityfibre available nationwide. Not Ofcoms fault per say for once.

 

Still i'm confident this will still happen in the next 12-18 months so watch this space

 

Dave

[EXA_Mark]

Great news....if anything like this were available in our schools.

 

I think we should start a petition to get the government (Ofcom) to force suppliers such as BT, Virgin etc to make these services available to all educational establishments.

 

There are things in the works now at that level that we are privy to, but cannot talk about yet, that will see it become available to many more schools than now but to be fair it will not be to every single school, but it will make it open to a lot more than it is now. And it could start much sooner than 18 months too!

[Tefters]

I’m privy and not hushed so

Just google up BT Openteach and Dark Fibre, it goes live to the market very soon and providers will be snapping the lines up pretty quickly however they then have to light them up, configure networks and prep the whole setup so say 12 to 18 months. One thing to bear in mind is although it’s dark Fibre it’s still openreach and prices are a little more than what you see on city Fibre providers.

 

Now coming back to city Fibre providers Exa went out their way for my school and footed a £5k+ (and that’s being generous) install cost with city Fibre themselves to get a Fibre to us over 75m ready for June next year and to now hear I’ll be getting 500mb for the price of the 300mb I signed for is even better!

[nathan]

I’m privy and not hushed so

Just google up BT Openteach and Dark Fibre, it goes live to the market very soon and providers will be snapping the lines up pretty quickly however they then have to light them up, configure networks and prep the whole setup so say 12 to 18 months. One thing to bear in mind is although it’s dark Fibre it’s still openreach and prices are a little more than what you see on city Fibre providers.

 

Now coming back to city Fibre providers Exa went out their way for my school and footed a £5k+ (and that’s being generous) install cost with city Fibre themselves to get a Fibre to us over 75m ready for June next year and to now hear I’ll be getting 500mb for the price of the 300mb I signed for is even better!

 

i'm googling and i can't see anything other than they were holding off on it due to the court decision ruling against ofcom?

[Tefters]

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/darkfibreaccess/darkfibreaccess.do

 

But of course Ofcom have thrown the spanner in the works but wont be for long.

Edited October 9, 2017 by Tefters

[nathan]

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/darkfibreaccess/darkfibreaccess.do

 

But of course Ofcom have thrown the spanner in the works but wont be for long.

 

That doesn't say anything else than what I've just said?

 

That the competition tribunal ruled against Ofcom. Is there any other info available?

[EXA_Mark]

i'm googling and i can't see anything other than they were holding off on it due to the court decision ruling against Ofcom?

 

I so wish I could say what I want to but I cannot, not yet!

 

The bit mentioned earlier about BT / Openreach was not what I was referring to though. That is the DFA (Dark Fibre Access), and the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled with BT (and others) who did not want to open this network up and appealed against the OFCOM decision to do so and won. This is now on indefinate hold. Do not expect this anytime soon. Of course Openreach could change their minds in the future, if they felt they were being left behind by not opening up.

[SchoolsBroadband]

It's all back to Ofcom to re-do some of the wording and definitions which the CAT deemed to be unworkable and anti competitive.

 

Personally I can't wait to see Dark Fibre available throughout the UK from BT. I did chuckle to myself that BT, City Fibre and Virgin Media all opposed the Ofcom ruling.

 

My view is that BT did it to protect their own margin and other fibre providers didn't want it as it'd get rid of their USP's or erode their own margin putting severe pressures on their business models.

 

Still that's business so for the mean time Dark Fibre is still more of a niche product but it'll be mainstream relatively soon I still think.

 

Until then we still offer it where available as well as high capacity Waves and Ethernet.

 

Dave

Edited October 10, 2017 by SchoolsBroadband