Add Value with Geo's Dedicated Network Solutions

The Geo dedicated fibre solution can deliver price stability, leading network reliability, scalability and market-leading Total Cost of Ownership in as little as 18 months. We can do this by helping you derive the best return in investment of your equipment and the network you purchase. Our modular approach can provide anything from just the fibre to a fully managed service, our clients are able to decide how much or how little they want to be involved in choosing system integrators and equipment vendors, and how much or little they want to be involved in managing the network. Geo is vendor-agnostic, and has excellent relationships with many vendors allowing you greater control over your costs. Such predictability of cost removes a huge burden from future budgets and business development models, while ensuring that the underlying infrastructure is capable of delivering more capacity, scale and flexibility than any standard product purchase ever could. Putting in place a simple platform that can support and sustain an organisation’s needs for business-critical applications over time ensures a great marriage of financial control and technical flexibility. Take advantage of flexible finance plans Geo recognises that many Companies have different financial needs in relation to upfront costs and recurring charges and we pride ourselves on the ability to structure contracts according to the financial needs of our clients and can tailor financing to balance the Capital vs. OPEX needs of each customer. If our customers need a particular type of asset long-term, they will endeavour to secure the certainty of cost that comes with a long lease and retain rights to that asset into the future.. Our proposition is that our customers should think of their data networks as a long term asset such as property, with 15 or 20 year leases. We offer the ability to take advantage of long leases of the underlying infrastructure and then quite separately offer a modular network development package to light it with the most appropriate technology. Other providers dilute the longevity of the underlying fibre infrastructure in their networks - the stable component - by insisting on bundling it with the short-term viability of the overlying equipment. The lease element of the deal with Geo is associated with the underlying fibre infrastructure, not the overlying equipment, which might be changed out several times during the course of a long lease. This offers our customers unique financing opportunities and options as the pricing of the underlying fibre asset remains constant, just like a property lease, and yet they are able to benefit from the latest technology as their requirements change.

Geo offers highly competitive prices, minimising contingency and innovating to facilitate a dedicated fibre solution. Our contracts can logically extend to 10 years (with rights to renew, if desired) at known, clear cost structures. This allows our customers to derive best return from and maximise the useful life of the equipment being purchased and to achieve flexibility and certainty of capacity costs to accurately forecast its future cash flows against volume and design requirements. . In addition Geo offers, for selected National customers, via its ‘Geo.Pool’, a property rates management service to pay property rates on behalf of our customers. Geo anticipates a discount of 20 – 60% over alternative rates approaches. By combining a long lease on the fibre with a flexible equipment solution, businesses are able to align capital outlay with the value of equipment and operational service. Such an approach also results in significant scale economies for higher data usage, plus capex reductions as technology costs fall. Such predictability of cost removes a huge burden from future budgets and business development models, while ensuring that the underlying infrastructure is capable of delivering more capacity, scale and flexibility than any standard product purchase ever could.

This is achieved through a technically superior dedicated network built with the latest fibre, free from the constraints of legacy equipment or restrictions on upgrading. Customers have the freedom to choose the most advantageous management, equipment, security and scalability options – without lock-in. Geo offers dedicated networks built specifically for you – from the fibre, to the equipment, to the network management – you get the best fit for your business from every part of your network tailor made. Migration to a solution where you have ultimate control over the usage of the physical network allows you to increase bandwidth at little or no incremental cost through straightforward equipment augmentation, at a fixed cost of expansion. Your network will have pre-defined growth capacity to be able to provide additional services quickly and efficiently. We differentiate ourselves through our focus on the delivery of high quality tailor-made solutions for our customers. We do not choose a technology to deliver data network services and offer it in the hope it will match our customers’ requirements. Instead, we consult with our customers to determine exactly what they need – and then work with them to design and deliver a solution which meets these requirements. During the planning, build and management of our solutions, customers get a very high touch experience with Geo

The Geo network is the newest legacy-free national duct and optical fibre network in the country. All of the network has been built since 1999/2003, using G655 fibre (trunk routes) and G652 fibre (access routes) and was designed with the lowest possible dB loss in mind. We have therefore kept the splices to a minimum and ensured that unnecessary use of connectors is avoided. This provides our customers with the latest technology resulting in higher reliability, a long term, stable network which is secure with no restrictions. Because Geo’s fibre is the most modern in the UK, it affords significant benefits in terms of low Chromatic Dispersion and Polarisation Mode Dispersion, vital characteristics for the future deployment of multiple 10Gbit/s, 40Gbit/s and even 100Gbit/s transmission links. It covers 3,000km of the country and connects all the major commercial centres. In addition, we have built some of the UK’s largest new optical fibre networks and are continually delivering major infrastructure projects to our customers.

The Geo network of fibre and facilities is inherently reliable achieving a reliability level of 0.25 cuts per year per 1000 km nationally. This is significantly less than the market average of 0.5 cuts per 1000km per year. The Geo.Metro network uses the Capital’s sewer system, deep below the streets of London, and the main Geo infrastructure predominantly follows the gas utility network through primarily rural areas crossing farmland as opposed to following the line of the road. This ensures that the cables are situated away from major construction activity giving unique routes that are often protected from day to day surface disruption and therefore subject to very low levels of disturbance. Our Network offers high security and reliability as the likelihood of being dug up or intercepted is significantly reduced.

Customers benefit greatly from the stability that a partner that is debt free, cash rich and financially secure can provide. Geo has not had any of the Chapter 11 or debt issues that have dogged other network providers. Geo operates the newest national fibre network in the UK which has been built to ensure current and future optical technology can operate optimally, ensuring our customers have a partner with a future proof network, built for the long term. We believe that our high quality optical fibre network will be the optimum transport mechanism for large data networks in the UK for many years to come. Combined with Geo’s expertise in designing the best fit optical transmission technologies, our customers choose to commit to contracts that on average run for over 10 years,- acknowledging the value of owning an infrastructure-based network.

Having control of a dedicated fibre based network will ensure that bandwidth availability will never be a constraint to business. This is achieved through a technically superior dedicated network built with the latest fibre, free from the constraints of legacy equipment or restrictions on upgrading – enabling easier, more productive integration into your business and operations. All of Geo’s network solutions and products are run over end-to-end fibre optic cables used solely by each of our customers. Other suppliers bundle customers onto the same fibre and have a multitude of different data running on their networks, ranging from various types of media to carrier traffic, which leads to increased network complexity, unnecessary processing points and higher latency. The Geo approach provides a streamlined design to suit our customer’s specific needs, ensuring the lowest possible latency impact, helping them to control their own secure and reliable fibre networks.

Given the potential costs of connectivity and the restrictions technology can place upon the choice of site location, network infrastructure is a crucial element in the decision to invest in a property. The suitability of current or proposed property for predominantly technical functions (such as a data centre) can be established via a fibre survey. Geo provides a fibre locating consultancy service. The resulting report is unbiased towards any provider and allows customers to gain a fair assessment of the current availability of fibre infrastructure in a given location helping them to decide on a location’s viability for their business function. The report will provide a go/don’t go decision based on the general availability of network infrastructure in the geographic area of interest, along with likely cost and timescale for connectivity. It can also provide information such as the physical presence of infrastructure, potential delivery risks, supply availability and security of supply. The data solutions available from Service Providers are also established.

During 2006 and 2007, Geo successfully rolled out our Quality Management System (QMS) within the Operations function and achieved certification to the International Standards Organisation ISO9001:2000 Quality standard. The scope of the QMS incorporates all processes executed during the customer experience from the planning and development through to the delivery and in-life management of their own network Geo also has a dedicated project team of experienced personnel whose sole focus is to plan and execute the delivery of bespoke solutions to customers, based upon the implementation of Geo’s tried and proven project management methodology. Good delivery is only effective when combined with good design and engineering capability. Over and above the project team we have a strong planning team and design solutions team made up of experienced staff with over 100 years of collective experience in the design and planning of telecommunications networks and solutions. When you add to this the significant engineering resource and capabilities of Geo’s delivery partners, you have a recipe for outstanding implementation. Finally, we deliver because we listen to our customers’ requirements and priorities and establish early controls within our project management framework. Early engagement of our teams in planning, engineering scope development and risk assessment and mitigation is at the heart of our approach.