The aim of the move is to enable wholesale customers to connect into BT’s core network via Ethernet rapidly and cost-effectively by bringing the network closer to them. BT says its PoPs enable costs of up to 75% lower than using traditional access via direct network-access products.
“This is part of a wide investment in BT’s Ethernet footprint across the UK, and it comes at a time when the cloud and hosted communications services market continues to grow rapidly,” says Paul Beacham, GM for TDM data, Ethernet and optical product management at BT Wholesale.
The company began its roll-out of data centre PoPs earlier this year and has already established presences in Telehouse Europe North, the Global Switch1 data centre in London and one of the UK’s largest data centres, in Newport, Wales.
BT plans to launch more PoPs this year and support 10Gbps ports in key locations, before expanding its next-generation optical network in 2015 into data-centre locations to support bandwidths of up to 100Gbps.
