SOME stories you can’t make up.
Ten years ago Atlantic Telecom, one of the high profile backers of the Commonwealth Games, buried 48 miles of fibre optic cables under the streets of Manchester.
“It leapfrogs Manchester into becoming a joined up connected city and one of the world’s top 20 digital cities by 2020. And no other city has it. Just Manchester."
It circles the city centre and stretches out to Eccles in the West, towards Oldham in the north, east to Gorton, out to the Trafford Centre and down to the airport.
If you were anywhere round the city back in 90/91 you will remember the disruption. It was a nightmare.
But Atlantic went bust before the Games began, the cabling never went live and the system was one of the assets sold off by the receivers.
And everyone sort of forgot about it – until now.
Loop map
The network was bought at auction for £1.3m by Gamma, now one of the largest communications firms in the UK, who maintained it over the years but did not quite realise what they are sitting, or rather walking on, until now.
Sue Woodward of The Sharp Project, not usually given to hyperbole, said: “When they came to me and I realised what they had it was like discovering gold under the streets of Manchester.
“It’s like a golden track of connectivity that loops around the city, it hits all the key areas.
“When we sat discussing it in the room I was just shaking my head at the enormity of what was under our feet. Gamma was smart enough to buy it in the first place and sensible enough to keep it maintained and now business can exploit its potential.
“It leapfrogs Manchester into becoming a joined up connected city and one of the world’s top 20 digital cities by 2020. And no other city has it. Just Manchester.
Gamma has its UK operations and management base at Trafford Park with 100 staff but CEO Bob Falconer acknowledges the role both Woodward and the Commission for the New Economy played in recognising the potential of what is now known as The Loop.
He said: “People like Alex Roy discovered that we had this capability, introduced us to Sue who was looking to bring in high speed broad band capability and we had a cable going right past the front door of The Sharp Project.
“They are now hooked up and businesses based there will benefit.
“The Loop gives us significant network capacity and coverage across the Manchester region, in some cases, where no other fibre network capacity or capability exists. We can provide high capacity internet and voice services to specific locations at a competitive price as the cabling is already installed. It would cost tens of millions to install this level of cabling from scratch today and cause massive disruption digging up the roads.”
The Sharp Project is already connected up but who else could benefit?
Large organisations, office blocks and businesses along the route of The Loop are obvious and Gamma used the low tech method of a student on a bike to cycle the route and list companies to find out their target customers.
Others already offer fibre optic broadband capability but no other company has the infrastructure of The Loop, its scale is quite staggering and the fact that it has been there all this time, quite unbelievable.
As Woodward said: “You need a multiple supply chain to ensure best service and best value for the customer. Reliable, fast service attracts more players, who in turn attract data centres and more digital companies and then that’s when the magic happens.”
More technical stuff is here: www.theloopmanchester.co.uk
You can find out more about Gamma here: www.gamma.co.uk
Ashley Griffiths, MD of The Loop
Loopy hole
