A new broadband initiative at the Shannon Free Zone in Co. Clare is set to provide a significant boost to business in the area and give Shannon Development a valuable marketing tool to strengthen its case for foreign direct investment. A new dark fibre optic cable will give businesses operating in the Zone and Smithstown business parks the opportunity to avail of enhanced high speed broadband services improving the region’s national and international connectivity.
The new service is being provided by Aurora Telecom, a division of Bord Gáis Networks. Shannon Development worked with Aurora to extend their planned Ennis to Cork fibre project to include the Shannon Free Zone and Smithstown business parks. A strong business case was put forward by Shannon development who facilitated Aurora with a site at Shannon for their POP (point of presence, i.e. telecom switch).
Dr. Vincent Cunnane, chief executive, Shannon Development said that the new service will offer industries in the Zone and Smithstown virtually unlimited resilient bandwidth well into the future, a key selling point for potential foreign direct investors.
“As Aurora’s network is fibre based, it ensures a network that is future proofed and therefore it is highly attractive to industries that need high bandwidth resilient services such as data and financial service centres. It will complement and enhance the existing broadband services and provide industries with additional high end routing options into and out of the Zone and Smithstown,” said Dr. Cunnane.
Speaking about the project work involved, Seán O’Donnell, general manager, Aurora Telecom said, “We were more than happy to facilitate Shannon Development within the Ennis to Cork fraction of our overall Dublin to Cork fibre project. The work involves installing fibre optic cable into 140km of existing roadside ducting. It will complete the Dublin to Cork project which is designed to facilitate the development of a high speed communications network in urban centres located along the route in support of the Government’s plan to roll out first class broadband services across the country.”
Work has just commenced on the Aurora Shannon LAN (Local Area Network) project which will involve running almost 11km of dark fibre optic cable around Shannon. Up until now, the majority of optical fibre networks have been built by carriers who control the total capacity of the fibre and provide managed services to customers. Dark fibre network solutions provide both telecommunications carriers and corporate organisations with the infrastructure required to ‘own’ a fibre optic network without the burden of network construction and maintenance, giving them effective control of their telecommunications networks and facilitating a reduction in operational expenditure.
The project is expected to take three months to complete and will directly benefit Government agencies, large corporate organisations and financial services. The open access nature of the Aurora network will also introduce additional telecom operators into the market which should also benefit SME’s by introducing greater competition.
“Once finished, this will provide Shannon Free Zone businesses with additional backhaul connections to Cork and Dublin via this dark fibre optic cable network and provide improved national and international broadband connectivity at the Free Zone. High capacity and high speed communication networks are more important now than ever and we have another significant selling point for Shannon Development in our endeavours to attract foreign direct investment to the Shannon Free Zone.” said Dr. Cunnane.
Nandi O’Sullivan
Public Relations Manager
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