News

JLL continues data centre recruitment drive with key hire

JLL has announced that Craig Adamoli has joined the company as Senior Director of Data Centre Transactions in its EMEA data centre practice, working with existing clients in a growth role. Craig brings with him 27 years of combined experience within the data centre sector and wider commercial real estate industry, where he is tasked with helping drive growth across JLL’s major hyperscale and growth accounts within EMEA. Based in London, Craig reports to Tom Glover, Head of Data Centre Transactions, EMEA. Tom comments, “We are excited to welcome Craig to the business. He’s held numerous leadership, client management and project roles throughout an impressive career. Craig joins a target driven, revenue orientated, transaction-based team that will benefit from his vast experience. His deep domain background within corporate real estate, paired with the benefit of having worked for a major data centre operator, brings important skill sets to the team and will help with our ambitious growth plans in the region.” Craig recently spent over a decade in various transactional positions at commercial real estate firm, Newmark. Prior to those roles, he worked within Occupier Services at CRBE, before joining Global Switch to run the data centre operator’s London campus. Adamoli’s background also includes time spent heading up mobile communications giant Nokia’s Transaction EMEA Management Team. Craig joins during a time of record demand in the data centre industry. JLL Research recently published a report revealing the sector will grow at a phenomenal pace in 2025. Across the hyperscale and colocation segments, an estimated 10 GW is projected to break ground globally in 2025, while 7 GW will likely reach completion. Based on this current pace of under construction and planned developments, the global data centre market will likely expand at a baseline 15% CAGR through 2027 – with the potential to reach 20%. “I wanted to join a team that was mature, but also had a great growth trajectory and I’m delighted to have found that here at JLL,” Craig states. “With all of the ongoing technological advancements in the sector, this is a burgeoning young industry with huge potential that requires best in class operators. I’m excited to be working within a team that has exceptional subject matter expertise to deliver exceptional value for our clients.” For more from JLL, click here.

Ooredoo and DE-CIX bring Internet Exchange to Qatar

Ooredoo, a Qatar-based telecommunications operator, in partnership with DE-CIX, a global operator of carrier-neutral Internet Exchanges (IX), has officially announced Doha IX powered by DE-CIX, Qatar’s first standalone commercial Internet Exchange (IX). Leveraging DE-CIX’s global expertise, developed across nearly 60 locations worldwide, this initiative strengthens Qatar’s position as a regional digital hub by enhancing connectivity, reducing costs, and delivering exceptional customer experiences. Doha IX will offer a secure, carrier-neutral platform that facilitates low-latency traffic exchange, improves network performance, and supports remote peering services. Businesses in Qatar and across the region will benefit from cost-effective, direct access to global and regional content providers, streamlining connectivity through a single port while significantly reducing traditional IP Transit costs. Doha IX is built on DE-CIX’s cutting-edge interconnection infrastructure and Ooredoo’s state-of-the-art data centres. Supported by both partners’ established relationships with global content providers and networks, these critical assets ensure seamless and efficient traffic exchange, reducing latency, optimising network performance, and creating a robust Internet Exchange ecosystem in Qatar. “We are proud to introduce Doha IX, which represents a significant step in upgrading Qatar’s digital infrastructure,” says Thani Ali Al Malki, Chief Business Officer at Ooredoo Qatar. “Doha IX delivers faster, more reliable connectivity while reducing operational costs for businesses and driving innovation across various industries, aligning with the goals of Qatar’s National Vision 2030 and advancing our digital transformation initiatives.” Ivo Ivanov (pictured above, right), CEO of DE-CIX, adds, “With Doha IX powered by DE-CIX, we are bringing DE-CIX’s global expertise to Qatar, enabling businesses and networks to benefit from superior interconnection services. Doha IX is the ideal place for international networks interested in reaching this important Middle Eastern market. The new IX, established through the partnership between DE-CIX and Ooredoo, will unleash the potential of the country’s digital economy by providing better performance and user experience of content and applications, and affordable and high-quality Internet access for enterprises and individuals. This partnership marks an important milestone in strengthening regional connectivity and creating an advanced digital ecosystem that supports economic growth and innovation in the GCC for the amazing digital decades ahead of us.” DE-CIX is an established name in the Middle East, with a proven track record of developing healthy IXs and vibrant interconnection ecosystems. Doha IX, which will be built and operated under the DE-CIX as a Service (DaaS) model, is the sixth IX operated by DE-CIX in the region. Through this collaboration, Ooredoo and DE-CIX are setting the foundation for advanced interconnection in the region. Together, they support Qatar’s digital transformation goals and are seeking to position the country as a leader in the global digital economy, aligning with Qatar’s National Vision 2030. For more from DE-CIX, click here.

Lightpath announces LightCube edge data centres

Lightpath, an all-fibre, infrastructure-based connectivity provider seeking to revolutionise how organisations connect to their digital destinations, has closed the transaction to acquire substantially all of the assets of United Fiber and Data (UFD). The company has also introduced LightCube edge data centres, which will first be deployed along its NYC-Ashburn strategic network route. The company states that the asset additions elevate its position in the digital infrastructure industry, and expand its reach in the New York Metro and Ashburn markets. Lightpath adds the geographically diverse, 323-mile NYC-Ashburn route, as the company continues to amass new and unique route options between these markets. Lightpath also adds 79-miles of metro fibre in New Jersey and New York City, and approximately 250 new commercial service locations in Manhattan. Lightpath now offers over 1,500 enterprise and data centre service locations in Manhattan alone, a five-fold increase over the last three years. Lightpath’s New York City to Ashburn network route is geographically diverse from typical network routes along the I-95 corridor and offers the industry’s lowest latency between the largest population centre in the country and the largest data centre and cloud ecosystem in the world. Service options on this route include dark fibre and wavelengths up to 800 Gbps. Tim Haverkate, EVP of Major Infrastructure Solutions at Lightpath, comments, “This route represents a unique opportunity for customers to connect these critical markets with diversity, latency management, and soon, the addition of edge compute facilities. Lightpath has seen surging demand on this route, with nearly 25% of the cable under contract, a 3.5 times increase since the transaction was initially announced. Further, we are engaged in active conversations with 20 customers resulting in an opportunity pipeline that would oversubscribe the route as it exists today.” Lightpath customers can connect to almost any data centre in the Ashburn region and, in total, can connect to over 140 data centres across its footprint. Lightpath can route customers from any on-net data centres in New York Metro or Boston Metro to Ashburn utilising this route, while also delivering routing options along the I-95 corridor to support services on the NYC-Ashburn route.Lightpath has also introduced LightCube edge data centres – modular, secure, and customisable facilities that fully support the capacity for 864-count fibre cables and the corresponding space and power for edge compute workloads. Lightpath will be upgrading four existing ILAs on the NYC-Ashburn route with new LightCubes in response to customer demand. “This route represents a strategic addition to the Lightpath network, extending our reach from the north-east into the ever-expanding data centre ecosystem in Ashburn,” states Chris Morley, CEO of Lightpath. “We will continue to aggressively pursue organic and inorganic opportunities to meet both the metro and the long-haul requirements on behalf of our hyperscaler, carrier, and enterprise customers.” For more from Lightpath, click here.

Designers create garment made from data centre materials

Ahead of London Fashion Week, designer, Maximilian Raynor, and data centre company, Equinix, have taken wearable tech to a different dimension with the creation of a one-off garment that brings the internet to life by using recycled materials in new and innovative ways. Merging high fashion with sustainability, the dress (which was developed with the codename 'Project Max') is made entirely from discarded data centre materials - including 3,600m of internet cables, metal nuts and bolts - to showcase the ‘personification of the internet herself'. The garment reportedly took in the region of 640 hours to create. Bruce Owen, President EMEA at Equinix, explains, “We have worked with designer, Maximilian Raynor, to bring the internet to life through a visually striking piece of design in the form of a dress made from materials at our London data centres. By bridging the gap between physical and virtual, we wanted to create something tangible that works as a unique talking point to highlight the many thousands of connections that are created by Equinix to support economies and societies every day. “The design pays homage to the physicality of the vital infrastructure that makes up the internet. Rather than some sort of weird magic or unexplainable force that just happens to work, it’s a physical, intricate network of cables, traversing land and sea and creating physical connections housed in Equinix data centres worldwide. “People have never been more aware of the impact of digital on their lives – especially with the explosion in advancements of technologies like AI, cloud, and quantum that all rely on these physical hubs to expand and collaborate. It’s no coincidence that a key theme at Davos last week centred around the Intelligent age and what that means for economies and societies worldwide. “Ultimately, this is a light-hearted way of exploring something important. We want the campaign to showcase the internet’s real-world impact on people’s daily lives and businesses, as well as its vital role in the UK economy. Whether that is the development of new drugs to cure disease, or the way we pay for our food - both online and in shops, or even the way we keep people connected to each other over vast distances. By highlighting the value that data centres bring to society, we aim to answer questions surrounding data centre operations and generate global awareness for our fast-growing and ever-important industry.” For more from Equinix, click here.

Verne expands Helsinki data centre campus

Verne, a provider of sustainably powered HPC data centres across the Nordics, has acquired the land at its existing Helsinki data centre campus, securing room for future expansion. The company says that the purchase marks another milestone in its ambitious growth strategy for the Nordics, following the recent announcement of its new facility to be built in Mäntsälä, Finland. Verne plans to develop the site further, leveraging its 70MW capacity to meet the increasing demand for sustainable, high-performance compute infrastructure. The land was acquired from Onvest, a family-owned company with a long history in the region. The existing site in Helsinki currently serves a number of high-profile multinational customers. Verne tells us that its strategic location provides excellent connectivity to power and fibre networks, proximity to Helsinki Airport, and easy access to the city centre – making it ideal for organisations across industries looking for reliable, accessible, and well-connected facilities. Designed with high-density compute in mind, the planned expansion will include two new buildings fully equipped to meet the technical requirements of AI, HPC, and other intensive workloads.Verne remains committed to sustainability, with the Helsinki campus running on 100% renewable energy. Waste heat generated by the data centre is repurposed through a direct connection to the local district heating network. All new facilities will be built to support liquid cooling, enabling efficient management of the high heat levels generated by AI and other intensive compute workloads. This design makes the existing heat reuse infrastructure even more vital, facilitating the effective capture and repurposing of waste heat.Additionally, Verne uses renewable diesel for its backup power generators in Finland, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the generators by an average of 90%. “The acquisition of this site reinforces Verne’s long-term commitment to Finland and provides an even stronger foundation for our continued growth in the region,” says Dominic Ward, CEO of Verne. “We’ve seen a huge uplift in demand, and having successfully operated from this location for a number of years, we are well-positioned to scale our capabilities and continue delivering industry-leading, sustainable data centre solutions to support the next generation of AI and high-performance computing.” For more from Verne, click here.

AVK to open Netherlands service hub

AVK, a supplier of power solutions for data centres and organisations in the UK and Europe, is driving further European expansion by opening a new service hub in the Netherlands. This strategic move will reduce reliance on AVK’s existing service infrastructure in the UK by creating a strong local presence in Europe. Based in Lelystad – around 30 minutes from Amsterdam – AVK says that the new service hub is the latest example of the company's commitment to providing the highest levels of in-country support for the increasing number of European data centres as they go live, and throughout their operation. By offering AVK’s European customers a dedicated, localised service infrastructure, the hub is designed to deliver enhanced service responsiveness, improved logistics, and stronger client partnerships in Europe’s burgeoning data centre market. When the new service hub opens as scheduled in April this year, companies operating in the energy and data infrastructure sector across Europe can immediately benefit from the greater proximity of AVK service engineers to major data centres, ensuring rapid support and improving operational efficiencies. The Netherlands hub will consist of warehousing, critical spares and administrative offices for which staff recruitment is currently underway, including for a European Service Manager. Plans are in place for AVK to expand its European presence even further, with the next new hub scheduled to be set up later this year in Frankfurt, followed by other key locations. There is already a service office operating in Dublin, Ireland. AVK states that the creation of these new service hubs not only illustrates its forward-thinking approach to integrating local infrastructure, but that it also underlines the company’s growth trajectory and its continuing investment in operational excellence. The hubs also support AVK’s long-term plan to roll out its Academy programme to provide further training. AVK academies are dedicated training hubs that play a vital role in developing the next generation of data centre engineers. Lynsey Partlow (pictured above), Service Director at AVK, says, “For several years, AVK has been expanding its service operations across European territories as a reflection of the significant number of new data centres that have been created. From this summer, we expect to see a lot more data centres commissioned and going live throughout the region, and it is essential that AVK has an active in-country service footprint that enables us to support our partners proactively as they grow. “Setting up these strategic service hubs will help us enormously with our supply chains, our relationships with clients and our field delivery. Instead of locally-based staff relying on our service infrastructure in the UK, having a European infrastructure will make a massive difference to how we support the increasing numbers of customers setting up new data centres across the continent.” Looking even further ahead, Lynsey reveals several additional developments in the pipeline for AVK. For example, AVK technicians are to carry out the service and maintenance of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems that the company installs in data centres to minimise harmful emissions from diesel-powered backup generators. For more from AVK, click here.

CtrlS Datacenters launches GreenVolt1 solar farm

CtrlS Datacenters has unveiled its captive GreenVolt1 solar farm in India. Phase I of the solar farm with a capacity of 62.5MWp already went live in June 2024, while Phase II with an additional capacity of 62.5MWp is under implementation. CtrlS spent over a year in R&D to optimise the project and comply with all the regulations.          With ambitious plans to develop over GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030 across India, including notable ongoing investments in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, CtrlS is dedicated to reducing carbon emissions and promoting renewable energy adoption. Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder and CEO, CtrlS Datacenters says, “GreenVolt 1 will power CtrlS data centres both existing and upcoming, which we believe will set a new benchmark in the Indian data centre industry. We are committed to scaling our DC capacity to over 1GW and our GreenVolt solar farm is a major step towards doing that sustainably.” As part of the $2 billion investment plan announced by CtrlS earlier, the company has set its eyes to achieve net zero goal by 2040. To fulfil that goal, CtrlS is investing in solar projects across India. “GreenVolt1 is a giant leap with an intent to make bigger strides and expand GreenVolt projects across India. This is part of our journey towards sustainability, guided by the idea of responsible growth. We are now closer than ever before to the big picture- Making CtrlS completely carbon neutral by 2040,” Sridhar adds. Located in Nagpur, Maharashtra, the 125 Wp solar farm will power 60% of CtrlS’ Mumbai Datacenter Campus with clean energy, further solidifying the company’s green credentials. With this, enterprises hosted at CtrlS Mumbai Datacenter Campus can achieve their Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by offsetting their carbon footprint – in line with the brand mission of helping them take control of digital transformation seamlessly, securely and sustainably. CtrlS GreenVolt 1 is spread over 340 acres of land. Phase 1 of the project, which went live in June 2024, powers 30% of CtrlS Mumbai Datacenter Campus with solar energy, to be further scaled to 60% with the completion of Phase 2, adding another 62.5 MWP of solar capacity. Key differentiators CtrlS’ GreenVolt1 solar farm has a geographic advantage. Most solar farms are isolated in remote areas, but this site is located along the Mumbai-Kolkata highway, ensuring seamless connectivity. It’s a rare tabletop land, ensuring optimal utilisation of land area, evenly laid-out solar panels and cost-savings. While most solar farms in India use P-type panels, CtrlS GreenVolt 1 uses advanced N-type panels, the most efficient solar panels, delivering more energy with reduced land requirements and ensuring high efficiency in energy production. In phase 1, the company has installed 107,912 solar panels. CtrlS is on a mission to build over 1GW of solar capacity by 2030, which will power the company’s data centre footprint of over 1,000MW by 2030.

Riello UPS set for Data Centre World 2025

Critical power protection specialist, Riello UPS, is set to showcase its comprehensive range of data centre products and innovations at the industry’s largest trade event of the year. The uninterruptible power supply manufacturer is once again exhibiting at Data Centre World, which returns to ExCeL London on 12-13 March. Members of the Riello UPS team will be on hand at stand DC340 throughout the two-day event to showcase demo versions of several of its data centre UPS ranges, including the modular Multi Power and Multi Power2, the evolution of its modular offering capable of ultra-high efficiency of up to 98.1%. They will also be on hand to outline the business’s range of UPS maintenance plans, comprehensive data centre UPS design and consultancy services, and a growing library of certified CPD content for data centre consultants and engineers. Data Centre World is recognised as the largest global gathering of data centre professionals, and this year’s event is once again staged as part of the wider Tech Show London, giving attendees the opportunity to explore four other co-hosted events (Cloud Expo Europe, DevOps Live, Cloud & Cyber Security Expo, and Big Data & AI World). DCW 2025 will host more than 300 exhibitors from across the industry, along with a packed conference programme featuring over 200 hours of seminars, discussions, and speakers. Key themes for this year’s show include: • Redefining Data Centres: Sustainability, Resiliency, and Tech Innovation• Navigating the Regulation Landscape• Protecting the Data Centre: Security in the Modern World• Modernising Data Centre Infrastructures: Edge, Colocation, Hyperscales• The Impact of AI on Data Centres• Cultivating a People-Focused Data Centre Workforce Culture• Financing Data Centres: The Investor’s Perspective. Leo Craig, Managing Director of Riello UPS, comments, “Data Centre World is always our most anticipated show of the year and we can’t wait to showcase our proven range of data centre solutions again at the ExCeL. “This year’s event is the first since our successful completion of the company merger, bringing together all the wholly owned UK subsidiaries of Riello UPS under one strong, unified brand. We’re looking forward to showing how integrating these strengths, expertise, and resources into a single entity will enable us to provide enhanced product and service offering, along with expanded customer support.” For more from Riello UPS, click here.

Feature - The Top Internet Outages of 2024

Ahead of their appearance at the upcoming DTX Manchester exhibition - taking place from 2-3 April 2025 - Cisco ThousandEyes, a network intelligence company, explores some of 2024’s most notable Internet outages and application issues, along with key takeaways to help ITOps teams improve digital resilience in 2025. In 2025, digital resilience is a top priority for IT Operations teams around the globe. When outages happen, it’s how you identify and recover from them that makes the big difference for users and businesses. Beyond that, consistent proactive optimisation is essential to both elevate digital experiences for users and guard against potential problems before they impact customers. The biggest outages of 2024 provide plenty of learnings for ITOps teams charged with improving digital resilience in their business, with recurring themes emerging - most notably the number of outages that were the consequence of configuration changes or automation related. Here, Cisco ThousandEyes goes through some of the most notable outages and disruptions of 2024, identifying key takeaways to help businesses assure great digital experiences for their users in 2025. Microsoft Teams Service Disruption | 26 January 2024 Microsoft Teams was disrupted for more than seven hours in January, when a problem inside Microsoft’s own network affected the collaboration service. Frozen apps, login errors, and users left hanging in meeting waiting rooms were some of the symptoms reported during the disruption, which began early in the workday for many Americans. ThousandEyes’ own observations during the incident indicated that the failure was consistent with issues in Microsoft’s own network. Failover didn’t appear to relieve the issue for many users; although further “network and backend service optimisation efforts” did eventually restore service. Meta Outage | March 5, 2024 On 5 March, Meta experienced an outage that prevented users from accessing services including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads. While the platform appeared to be reachable, many users were unable to proceed beyond the login or authentication process. Shortly after the outage began, Meta confirmed that it was experiencing problems with its login services. The issue was likely caused by a failure in one of the dependencies that the login system relies on. ThousandEyes observations also point to a backend cause, as Meta’s systems appeared reachable and network paths connecting to the services didn’t display any significant network conditions that could have led to the outage. This outage serves as a reminder that issues with just one part of the application delivery chain can render the whole service functionally unusable. It’s crucial to have full visibility into your whole digital delivery chain to help identify any drops in performance or functionality. Atlassian Confluence Disruption | March 26, 2024 In late March, workspace application Atlassian Confluence experienced issues, resulting in customers having problems accessing the service and receiving HTTP 502 bad gateway errors. While this was a relatively short outage, lasting just over an hour, ThousandEyes’ analysis revealed it affected users all over the globe. By tracing the network paths to the application’s frontend web servers, hosted in AWS, it was clear that this was a backend issue rather than network connectivity itself. This is one of those outages where relying on error messages would only give you half the story. Identifying the root cause requires you to consider factors such as any third-party dependencies. Being able to rule out issues with a cloud hosting provider, for instance, gets you one step closer to identifying the real problem. Google.com Outage | 1 May 2024 In early May, Google.com experienced a global disruption lasting around an hour, during which users encountered HTTP 502 error messages instead of the expected search results. The HTTP 502 status code often indicates a proxy server failing to connect with the origin server. It can also be a sign of overwhelming levels of traffic, but there was no reason to suspect that Google was suddenly struggling under demand, with no extraordinary events to trigger such an influx of search traffic. ThousandEyes analysis revealed a 'lights on/lights off' scenario, where service suddenly dropped, suggesting a problem with backend name resolution or something connected to policy/security verification, rather than an issue with the search engine itself. CrowdStrike Sensor Update Incident | 19 July 2024 Organisations in Australia and New Zealand began experiencing issues on Friday 19 July, at mid-afternoon. A range of industries and major brands simultaneously reported outages as their Windows machines reportedly got stuck in a boot loop that ultimately resulted in the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). The impact quickly spread to other geographies, causing problems with airline booking systems, grocery stores, and hospital services. And these were just the tip of the iceberg. Initial responsibility for the widespread outage was thought to lie with Microsoft, but a different common denominator emerged: CrowdStrike, a managed detection and response (MDR) service used to protect Windows endpoints from attack. CrowdStrike published guidance on actions and workarounds for IT administrators, and an early technical post-incident report that attributed the incident to an issue with a single configuration file that “triggered a logic error resulting in a system crash and blue screen (BSOD) on impacted systems.” Recovery wasn’t a simple task, requiring IT staff to physically attend machines to get them functional. At one point, Microsoft reported that up to 15 reboots per machine may be needed. Cloudflare Disruption | 16 September 2024 Cloudflare is one of the world’s biggest CDN providers, so when it catches a cold, other well-known services start sneezing. Cloudflare’s 16 September outage lasted for around two hours, and affected applications such as Zoom and HubSpot. The ThousandEyes platform showed the impact on these third-party applications clearly, with agents in the US, Canada, and India all failing to connect to the various applications during the outage. This is a good example of how you can avert the “Is it just me?” problem. By tracking the entire service delivery process of your applications, you can follow the network paths taken by your apps - and the suppliers they are connected to. Microsoft Outage | 25 November 2024 Microsoft’s late November outage, which affected services such as Outlook Online, occurred in two parts and wasn’t always easy to spot. Problems emerged around 2 AM (UTC), with symptoms such as timeouts, resolution failures, and the occasional HTTP 503 error message. The problems were intermittent and not always obvious to end users, with the service sometimes presenting as slow or laggy. The issue appeared to be resolved within an hour or so, but four hours later problems emerged again, and this time with greater severity. ThousandEyes observed an increase in packet loss at the edge of the Microsoft network and increased congestion connecting to services. Microsoft later explained the problem was caused by a configuration change that caused an “influx of retry requests routed through servers.” The outage was resolved by performing “manual restarts on a subset of machines that [were] in an unhealthy state.” OpenAI Outage | 11 December 2024 We almost made it through an entire year of outages without mentioning AI. OpenAI’s December outage affected ChatGPT and the new generative video service, Sora. Users witnessed partial page loads, with requests for further information prompting HTTP 403 error messages. ThousandEyes observations pointed to backend application issues and that was later confirmed by OpenAI, which revealed that a new telemetry service deployment had “unintentionally overwhelmed the Kubernetes control plane,” causing cascading failures. Key takeaways from 2024 You’ll notice that most of the major outages of 2024 stemmed from a backend configuration change that had unintended consequences or the failure of an automated system. ITOps teams have limited control over faulty configuration changes made by service providers. However, they can enhance their overall visibility into service delivery paths, which allows them to quickly identify the source of any errors when they occur. This approach provides valuable insights into faults or degraded components, enabling teams to take appropriate actions, such as rolling back changes, redirecting to alternative resources, or implementing contingency plans. By thoroughly understanding their service delivery chains, teams can also regularly optimise services to improve digital experiences and enhance digital resilience. As we have observed in several significant outages of 2024, error messages typically provide only a hint about what has happened; they cannot in isolation identify the cause. If 2024’s major outages deliver one lesson, it’s that your digital resilience depends on knowing what’s gone wrong - or what could potentially go wrong - even before the service providers themselves acknowledge an issue. - Cisco ThousandEyes will be exhibiting at the upcoming DTX Manchester event, taking place on 2-3 April 2025. To register, and for more information about the event, click here. For more news from the DTX exhibitions, click here.

UK advances gigabit broadband expansion

Ultra-fast broadband has been rolled out in remote areas of Scotland as part of the Government's initiative to improve connectivity around the UK. Connectivity on the Scottish islands has long been a challenge due to their remote locations, but Openreach engineers, working on the Scottish government's Reaching 100% (R100) programme, have now brought full-fibre broadband to Tiree and Iona. This deployment required careful planning with local organisations to protect wildlife and the natural landscape. The upgrade is seen as transformative, linking islanders to the global digital economy. Further rural Scottish communities are set to benefit from the R100 programme in the coming months, aligning with the government's goal of full digital inclusion. Meanwhile, in North Yorkshire, Quickline is rolling out gigabit broadband under the £5bn Project Gigabit programme, launched in 2021 to boost economic recovery and regional development. Targeting areas overlooked by commercial providers, the initiative ensures underserved locations gain access to high-speed internet. Five months into its North Yorkshire contract, Quickline has delivered access to nearly 5,000 homes and businesses, including the first 46 premises under contract and an extra 4,800 through commercial expansion. The North Yorkshire contract aims to provide broadband to 36,000 funded premises, with an additional 50,000 connections through commercial expansion. Across all its Project Gigabit contracts, Quickline is set to connect 170,000 subsidised homes and businesses in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, rising to 360,000 with commercial builds. Elizabeth Anderson, CEO of the Digital Poverty Alliance, says, "The ongoing rollout of gigabit connectivity can make a transformative difference to the lives of people across the UK, providing fast broadband access to online digital services. Tasks such as online banking, e-learning and booking a digital healthcare appointment are made almost impossible for those without connectivity, so these broadband rollout schemes are vital for the British people. However, the affordability of these services is key - with faster packages often costing much more and being out of reach for those on lower incomes." "Scotland, especially, has proved difficult to reach for broadband providers due to its rural nature, but the success of the Tiree rollout highlights the roadmap for creating a connected Scotland. We'd hope to see the Scottish government placing affordable connectivity as a central point within their digital inclusion strategy work, committing substantial investment into high-speed, affordable infrastructure in rural areas to ensure digital quality for all."