Council and business leaders welcome Gigler Business Broadband trials

Bournemouth businesses trial gigabit broadband services powered by CityFibre’s fibre optic network. Following the recent launch of Bournemouth’s superfast broadband provider Gigler, it has now revealed that it is trialing gigabit services with local businesses. The news has been welcomed by both Bournemouth Borough Council and the Bournemouth Chamber of Trade and Commerce. Gigler is offering 21,000 Bournemouth households located on the town’s pure Fibre-to-the-Home network, broadband speeds more than 100 times faster than the UK average. Responding to a high level of interest from local business owners frustrated by the shortcomings of business broadband services available from incumbent providers, Gigler has begun trialing a new generation of business-grade pure fibre services. With up to 1 Gigabit (1000Mbps) upload and download, these symmetrical speeds can transform the way a business works. Transferring large files becomes much faster, increasing employee efficiency and smoothing communications with suppliers and customers. Tony Williams, Chief Executive of Bournemouth Borough Council said: “CityFibre’s investment in making Bournemouth the UK’s first gigabit town, alongside Gigler’s launch of services, will be a boost for business and will bring tremendous improvement to local residents in terms of speed and quality of access to the Internet. “The investment complements the council’s work in raising awareness of the town’s potential to take advantage of new information opportunities and helps position Bournemouth on the international stage. We will be working not only with Bournemouth businesses but also with the University, Arts University and other partners to ensure projects like the new National Coastal Tourism Academy can take advantage of our position as the UK first gigabit town.” With such abundant bandwidth at their fingertips, businesses enjoy greater visibility over their connectivity spend in future, avoiding the need to buy additional lines at lower capacity from incumbent suppliers. For employees living within Gigler’s footprint, the connectivity experience of working from home becomes indistinguishable from that which they have in the office. Nigel Hedges, President of the Bournemouth Chamber of Trade and Commerce added: “The Bournemouth Chamber of Trade and Commerce is delighted to hear that pure fibre business services are in the pipeline from Gigler and look set to be rolled out to assist businesses in our area even quicker than expected. The BCTC is delivering seminars free to our members and local companies, working with Bournemouth Council’s Recession Funding, to allow them advance knowledge of how to maximise their access to the next generation of pure fibre broadband services giving them a trading edge over rivals in other postcode business areas across the south coast.” One of the businesses currently helping to test Gigler Business Broadband is UK Sweets, an online confectionery wholesaler that employs 15 staff in the town. Its director, Mark Worthington explains: "Before we started trialing pure fibre broadband from Gigler, our head office was using a single ADSL line with service from BT. Without a consistent and quality service it was hard trying to run a business using digital media. Calls would drop and our site would be offline which is extremely damaging to reputation and profit. “Since getting Gigler, the incredible download speeds mean we can now give our clients a level of service that exceeds their expectations; coupled with the equally fast upload speeds also means easy and instant uploads to our sites. “We now have full confidence that this service will help us grow instead of holding us back. This type of pure fibre service will help other businesses like ours take full advantage of the explosive growth in digital opportunities." Alongside those interested in residential connections, Gigler is inviting businesses across Bournemouth that are interested in pure fibre based services, to register their interest atWww.gigler.co.uk so that the network can be extended to areas with the greatest demand. ENDS Media contact: Deborah Simcock / Alex Henshall CityFibre@Insightmkt.com t. 01625 500800 About Gigler Gigler is a new Internet Service Provider that will specialise in local delivery, starting in Bournemouth, of a new breed of fibre optic broadband service. Believing that everyone should enjoy the best possible broadband service whenever they use the web, Gigler has launched just one exciting product. Gigler Fibre Broadband offers up to 1Gigabit per second download (100x UK average) and up to 500Mbps upload (200x UK average), and ultra-low latency. For more information on Gigler’s services visit Www.gigler.co.uk About CityFibre CityFibre (www.cityfibre.com) is one of the UK’s leading fibre optic infrastructure providers. By building dedicated fibre optic networks for the public and private sectors, we empower data-hungry users throughout the country, by unleashing unlimited speeds on future-proofed technology. Our transformational fibre infrastructure projects comprise point-to-point connections, metro rings and Fibre-to-the-Premises networks that make possible Next Generation Access and gigabit level services direct to local authorities, businesses and homes. CityFibre manages over 100 private fibre projects and seven separate metropolitan fibre rings under long-term contracts with local authorities, police forces, healthcare organisations and universities. With almost 30,000km of fibre in the ground, connecting more than 350 sites and data centres across the UK, we are the country’s largest independent provider of fibre in secondary cities. In Bournemouth, CityFibre owns the largest FTTH project in the UK. With over 21,000 homes in marketing now, the network enables service providers to deliver unprecedented superfast broadband with speeds of up to one gigabit per second.