Giganet ELITE - Product Description

Introduction

Giganet ELITE is the name for Giganet's business-grade, uncontended and dedicated leased line services.

These are the preserve of those organisations that demand the very best connectivity, or who are located in areas where broadband infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired, and therefore a leased line is the only option.

ELITE services utilise Ethernet technology end-to-end unlike broadband. This offers better performance.

ELITE Specification

• Uncontended bandwidth - this means that the bandwidth offered on the leased line is all yours, dedicated to your organisation, and will no slow down during peak times.
• Symmetrical speeds - this means that the upload speed is the same rate as the download speed.
• Unlimited transfers - there are no data caps or limits.
• 24x7 support - we provide access to our support team 24x7 for critical service-affecting issues.
• 5-6hr fix SLA - depending on the carrier, we offer a guaranteed fix time of 5-6 clock hours.
• Managed router - we provide a carrier-grade Juniper router/device that allows us to proactively monitor your connection, assist us with troubleshooting, and can also be used to provide Quality of Service (QoS) for voice and other business applications, multiple VLANs, and MPLS PWAN routing functions.
• Option to upgrade - depending on the committed data rate (CDR) chosen and bearer bandwidth, customers can upgrade their speeds/bandwidth mid-term.

ELITE Carrier Options

Giganet directly connects to over xx national Ethernet carriers that are used to deliver the ELITE services to customers:

• BT Wholesale
• BT Openreach
• Colt
• CityFibre
• Giganet Local
• SSE
• TalkTalk Business
• Virgin Media
• Vodafone

Why is there so much choice?

This is because different network operators have their equipment, network and fibre infrastructure in different parts of the country due to competition, historic network build, and latterly government broadband schemes and private investor interest in fibre infrastructure build.

For instance CityFibre may be building their own fibre network in places such as Edinburgh and Bristol, whereas Virgin Media have presence in Southampton. In London, there are a huge number of fibre operators competing, including Colt (previously named City of London Telecom). However, in most of the UK, the incumbent telecoms operator (BT Plc) Openreach have infrastructure in most corners of the UK, operating from over 5,500 exchanges, and many millions of copper and fibre route miles. This network was opened up in the late 2000s by Ofcom and Local Loop Unbundling or LLU was born. This encouraged a lot more competition for broadband as well as leased line services.

Local Loop Unbundling/LLU

As Openreach has so much network reach, Ofcom in the 2000s decided to regulate that Openreach open up their exchanges and make the local loop of fibre and copper available to third party network operators. This is where the arrival of Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and others arrived out of. So a large number of the carriers we work with are LLU providers who have their own network infrastrcuture in the local Openreach exchanges, and from which they lease Openreach fibre to our customers.

In our Giganet Local areas, we are an LLU provider, and we have direct access to the Openreach network to reduce the supply chain even further. This helps increase speed of delivery and improve pricing.

Carriers we work with and fibre they use

Leased lines vs Broadband Comparison

The below is a comparison between Giganet's range of ELITE (leased line) services and Giganet's broadband services. Our business-broadband SLAs and fix times are much superior than our competitors as we add on the maximum carrier service levels, so don't be surprised there - you can get business-grade broadband!

¹For Broadband circuits operating in MPLS PWANs.
²Subject to extra charges of £3/IP/month beyond included allowance.
³Subject to potential high excess construction charges.