Welsh internet provider Ogi, which is building a multi-Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network for homes and businesses across South Wales, has today published an interesting visualisation of their optical backhaul network that shows all the key fibre links and distances between their key locations (Points of Presence).
The network operator has so far covered a total of 100,000 premises with their new full fibre network – most of them residential – in Wales up to the end of 2023 (up from 60k on 30th June 2023) and they’re also now home to a total of over 15,000 customers (4th March 2024), which is up from 10,000 on 4th Jan 2024 and 6,000 on 30th June 2023.
The new visualisation of Ogi’s optical Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network doesn’t tell us anything particularly new or surprising, it’s just quite a fun and interesting way of showing everybody how much work has been done to build the network and the way they’ve organised it, albeit only visualised to a very high / simplistic level.
Justin Leese, Ogi’s CTO, said:
“Here at Ogi we talk a lot about the towns where we’re building fibre across South Wales, and rightly so. However, we’ve not said much about the glue that connects those towns together and provides onward connectivity to the internet exchanges at London Internet Exchange (LINX), LINX Wales and LINX Manchester.
Over the past 2.5 years we’ve created a pan-South Wales optical backhaul network that gives us high capacity between those towns right now and massive scalability for the future. It also provides connectivity to our IT platforms, including our VoIP/SIP telephony systems, that are based in Vantage Data Centers. All of this achieved in a part of the UK that is not blessed with lots of pre-existing infrastructure.
We’ve worked with our own Network Build team to create many of these long-distance fibre routes using PIA. This has included significant engineering challenges, such as getting multi-ducts and fibre across the Cleddau Bridge in Pembrokeshire. Where it’s not been cost-effective or timely to build our own routes, we’ve worked with a variety of wholesale partners to take IRU’s or rent fibres to form this backbone.
Congratulations to my Director of Engineering and Network Ops, Doug Williams and his Network Engineering team (David Jones, Sophie Bartlett, Philip Jewell and Liam Mainwaring) who have diligently built the Points of Presence, commissioned the optical circuits and created this in a surprisingly short timeframe. I am super proud of you all.”