Geraldine Grewal is public relations officer of Geo, a leading provider of bespoke fibre networks. Geo are the people you want to talk to when you need 255mb a second delivered into your home office. Or to connect your company to another, at a reaaaaally fast speed.
I wouldn’t mind one of those connections in my place, actually. I once had a 155mb connection installed in my place in Charlton Street, just above Euston Road, in London. It was 155mb for about 20 minutes whilst the engineers tested it. Then they switched it back to 0.5mb as that’s what I was paying for. Joy. This was before broadband.
We get sent a lot of releases here at Mobile Industry Review — not all of them are relevant and not all of them fit into our sphere of interest — but this one caught my eye.
Firstly, it’s about lotsa-meg. Any mobile genius worth his or her salt will have an interest in megs-per-second. Or, in Geo’s case, gigs-per-second. It’s all about the speed, right?
Second, the press release title was simply: Fibre, network, london, sewer.
Gifted. A gifted title. Does-wot-it-sayz-on-the-tin.
A little more info:
Geo, a leading provider of bespoke fibre networks, today announced a refresh of their Geo.Metro product portfolio which includes the launch of Geo.ONE PLUS (1Gbit/s plus), Geo.TEN (10Gbit/s) and Geo.TEN PLUS (2 x 10Gbit/s), all scalable Managed Network Service solutions for businesses in London. The company is the only network provider to have deployed optical fibre via the Thames Water sewer system.
Geo’s high speed solution has been designed for medium to large sized organisations that require a secure and reliable network to connect multiple sites across the capital. Geo also offers dedicated fibre for customers who prefer to manage and own their own network infrastructure.
Fibre, network, London, sewer, yes, please. Although I don’t expect it will compete very effectively on price with o2’s recently announced £20/month mobile and home broadband solution.
There is a video of the Geo CEO talking about the concept on their front page. I’d have linked it here if it was embeddable.
I’m going to ask Steve O’Donnell of The Hot Aisle and Martin MacLeod (ye Brother and fellow data speed nut) of BladeWatch for their viewpoints. I reckon they’ll be overwhelmingly positive of the concept.
I love the idea – after some recent problems the existing providers of these types of services (yes, I'm looking at you BTOpenreach and Verizon) need a kick in the pants.
I wonder if they're large enough to be relied on for high availability services? There are some chaps digging up the road outside our office today, which means our link will probably go titsup later… would I need to be similarly concerned if one of the team had a bad curry and headed toilet-wards? 🙂
Hi Ewan,
Yes a very interesting idea putting fiber in sewers (I always said there was Brass in Muck!). I remember in my days at Esso Petroleum we took a call about doing something similar with Esso's national pipeline (that distributes petrol and diesel to all of the Fuel Terminals that the tankers then use to deliver locally to petrol stations). Great concept but failed at the first hurdle when we told the interested party that we sent robotic devices up the pipes to scrape the sides and keep them clean and free flowing!
I understand that Thames Water do much the same thing to clear up the unmentionable things that folk flush into the sewer that do cause blockages. I just can't believe that you asked me to comment on such a disgusting topic!
I can just imagine the story now:
“UK businesses terrorized by sewage eating robot”
Steve
Hi Ewan,
Yes a very interesting idea putting fiber in sewers (I always said there was Brass in Muck!). I remember in my days at Esso Petroleum we took a call about doing something similar with Esso's national pipeline (that distributes petrol and diesel to all of the Fuel Terminals that the tankers then use to deliver locally to petrol stations). Great concept but failed at the first hurdle when we told the interested party that we sent robotic devices up the pipes to scrape the sides and keep them clean and free flowing!
I understand that Thames Water do much the same thing to clear up the unmentionable things that folk flush into the sewer that do cause blockages. I just can't believe that you asked me to comment on such a disgusting topic!
I can just imagine the story now:
“UK businesses terrorized by sewage eating robot”
Steve
Hi Ewan,
Yes a very interesting idea putting fiber in sewers (I always said there was Brass in Muck!). I remember in my days at Esso Petroleum we took a call about doing something similar with Esso's national pipeline (that distributes petrol and diesel to all of the Fuel Terminals that the tankers then use to deliver locally to petrol stations). Great concept but failed at the first hurdle when we told the interested party that we sent robotic devices up the pipes to scrape the sides and keep them clean and free flowing!
I understand that Thames Water do much the same thing to clear up the unmentionable things that folk flush into the sewer that do cause blockages. I just can't believe that you asked me to comment on such a disgusting topic!
I can just imagine the story now:
“UK businesses terrorized by sewage eating robot”
Steve