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 e-llan Communications e-llan Communications is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Manx Electricity Authority (MEA), the statutory body responsible for the provision of electricity to the Isle of Man. In 2000, the MEA installed a submarine power cable between the UK and Douglas, Isle of Man. This connects the island to the UK National Grid to export and import power to the IOM. During this installation a fibre optic cable was buried alongside the power. Aside from fibres used for command and control of the substation, the cable had lain dormant until the IoM Government was approached to gain approval for their use in 2006. The IoM is a Crown dependency, so whilst part of the British Isles, it has its own parliament, Tynwald, responsible for managing all the affairs of the island. The island's Government has done much to encourage economic growth in recent years and by creating a sympathetic tax regime and suitable legislative framework has been successful in attracting investment into the IoM. Particular successes have been made with financial services organisations as well as those involved in the eGaming and gambling sector. These sectors were attracted due to the favourable business environment the island provided; however telecommunications infrastructure is inherent to the operations efficiency of these businesses. Financial services organisations tend to insist on resilient connectivity to prevent any single telecommunications failure causing an interruption to their business. With the increase in online business, gambling organisations have demanding requirements of their communications infrastructure – for them any interruption to communication would mean being offline, resulting in huge loss of earnings. For both financial services and gambling and gaming industries, connectivity is considered business critical. It was becoming apparent to the Government that, in order to continue to expand the economic development of the island, the communications infrastructure needed to keep pace with the increasing demand of business. Several options had been discussed and various telecommunications companies had been approached by a Government working party to understand how best use could be made of the infrastructure in place. This resulted in a tender process late in 2006. As a specialised provider of high performance networking solutions NWIX were approached in additional to several of the ‘traditional’ carriers. NWIX is distinctive in that its network is based around a number of interconnecting rings linking together data centres. This enables NWIX to deliver the diversity required for businesses with high performance needs. Also, NWIX had developed a means of implementation of core networking capability using cost-effective routers and switches to deliver huge Internet bandwidth without using the complex switches utilised by carriers such as BT, C&W and NTL. This places NWIX in a position to challenge both the mode of operation and the pricing strategies of UK telecommunications companies. It meant NWIX were in a position to provide the services required at a substantial saving against the other carriers. NWIX operates the peering LAN of MaNAP - effectively the Peering LAN overlays the NWIX network. As the second largest UK Internet Exchange, MaNAP offers the ability to peer with all other members as well as providing access to the wider Internet community. Previously, traffic from the IoM could only access the Internet through a London exchange, the distance and network employed added latency and delays on the network which could be disruptive particularly for industries with demanding requirements such as those on the IoM. e-llan Communications chose NWIX to provide the services required to ensure the existing cable could be used in addition to the existing infrastructure onto the island. Almost immediately, several businesses started to use the service including one of the leading business ISPs on the island who have been providing services to offshore business for over 10 years from their primary location in the IoM. They design, build and maintain secure multi-tier business Internet solutions and specialise in the high level security required in the online banking and gambling industries. To date, the project has proved highly successful and plans are already in place to increase the capacity as demand continues to grow from the island.
We recognise that diversity in our telecommunications infrastructure is a vital component for us to continue to grow so successfully in the world of e-business. Fast, reliable communications has been crucial in helping us to attract the businesses upon which much of our economic strength is based. The Government has realised that this asset needs constant review and development to keep pace with the world and has supported us in this recent project. |