Viatel has revealed a major investment in its Cork city infrastructure, upgrading its network to dark fibre.

Thanks to the presence of Apple and companies like EMC (now Dell), as well as the city and region’s instinctive entrepreneurial spirit, Cork has always been at the coalface of the digital economy.

Now that edge is about to get sharper, thanks to new plans by Colm Piercy’s Viatel to upgrade the company’s fibre network to dark fibre.

‘The demand for enterprise-class connectivity is growing rapidly as many multinationals are setting up in Cork’

– DAMIEN MCCANN

This will facilitate faster business broadband speeds of up to 10Gbps (10,000Mbps) to all premises, major business parks and data centres in and around Cork city.

Cork connects directly with London

The company said it is planning a multimillion-euro investment in its Cork infrastructure, specifically to link Cork directly to London with speeds of up to 100Gbps.

“This will significantly reduce transit time for traffic, as this traffic will no longer need to travel via Dublin to connect to London,” Viatel said.

Viatel, which also owns and operates the Digiweb consumer broadband brand in Ireland, has an 8,400km fibre network with more than 150 points of presence across western Europe, with direct reach into cities such as London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris and Zurich.

A year ago, Viatel was acquired by global bandwidth provider Zayo Group for €95m in an all-cash deal.

“The demand for enterprise-class connectivity is growing rapidly as many multinationals are setting up in Cork,” said Damien McCann, director of sales and marketing at Viatel, who made the announcement at a recent Cork Chamber Leadership Forum.

“We are constantly investing in our regional network so as to improve internet access and capacity for customers in Cork. This recent investment underpins our commitment to meet the growing demand for high bandwidth services in Cork,” McCann said.

Cork city winter traffic. Image: MV Photography/Shutterstock