Technology that connects communities

Community Fibre is an Internet Service Provider on a mission to provide everyone with fast and fairly- priced broadband. With a focus on social housing and multi-dwelling units, their aim is to shrink the digital divide, in part by connecting over one hundred community centres to London’s fastest fibre broadband network.

To support their fast-growing fibre-to-the-home network, and aggressive targets for the B2C rollout, Community Fibre needed a scalable platform for their core and access network.  Cisco with their industry recognised, ‘tried and tested’ solutions in the fibre- to-the-home broadband market was the vendor of choice.

With broadband consumers expecting near 5 nines availability, network reliability is critical.  Cisco’s Smartnet global support structure provided the assurance Community Fibre needed.

Now Community Fibre’s challenge was to find a partner who could understand what they wanted to achieve and had unrivalled knowledge of complex and critical network infrastructure.

“Camworth have a lot of experience in the service provider space, and a commitment to Cisco service provider specialisations -, one of only a few Cisco partners to have this in the UK.  They were able to validate our strategy and recommend infrastructure designs that incorporated next-generation routing technology from Cisco that delivered what we needed – a reliable and scalable platform that would support our growth strategy”

Neil Heffernan, Community Fibre

Camworth is one of a few of Cisco’s partners to hold its Advanced Service Provider Architecture Specialisation.

The technology

Camworth worked with Community Fibre’s Network Technology team to design and procure their core and access network infrastructure.

Perfectly suited for service providers like Community Fibre, Cisco’s Network Convergence System (NCS) 5500 platform offers industry-leading 100 GbE and 400 GbE port density which is designed to handle massive traffic growth, delivers operational efficiency benefits, and meets the scaling needs of service providers.

Running on IOS XR, a powerful carrier-grade operating system that extends into the access network, means that Community Fibre now has a modern,  ultra-secure, simplified and highly cost-efficient network.

Community Fibre’s routing platform makes use of the NCS’ capabilities to enable Segment Routing as their transport protocol instead of traditional MPLS – helping them to utilise network bandwidth more effectively and build unique network experiences and services for consumers. This cutting-edge technology not only enables Community Fibre to improve their network availability with automated 50ms protection, but most importantly it ensures cost-effective port density – meaning that they can deliver on their promise of high speed, fairly priced broadband. In some London Borough’s the service provider has been able to offer a 3Gbps service to residents.

“We have also used Cisco’s NCS routing technology to build the foundation for a highly automated, programmable and cost-efficient access network, so we can deliver cost-effective converged mobile, residential and business services quickly and efficiently”

Neil, Community Fibre

Unlocking unrivalled impact from scalable solutions

Solutions

• The NCS 5500 series’ 100 Gbe and 400 Gbe port density is designed to handle mass scale and increasing traffic growth – a must for any scaling service provider or ambitious organisation
• Promoting operational simplicity and efficiency for organisations and end-users alike, the NCS 5500 Series gives businesses the peace of mind that their offering is optimised from the inside out
• Agile and evolving, the Cisco NCS product family enables the development of unique network experiences for end-users, while still being easy to upgrade internally
• The NCS 540 for the access network helps Community Fibre build a cost-effective,  highly automated, and programmable network

Impact

• Powered by a future-proofed network. Community Fibre can now offer even more next-generation services and applications to their customers and communities – helping them improve revenue opportunities and achieve their purpose-led mission
• With cost and energy-efficiency front of mind, Community Fibre were able to lower power consumption, and keep costs in check, all while improving the end-user experience
• Benefiting from improved business agility, Community Fibre are better placed to stand out in a dynamic sector with increased service velocity
• Consumers can benefit from converged mobile, residential and business services while Community Fibre benefits from improved business agility, with the opportunity to develop additional revenue streams.

Learn more about our solutions