CASE STUDY CityFibre
“Now we are working ten hours a day and it’s a solid connection.”
Luc Logan, Business Unit Manager - Dalter UK
Success story - CityFibre based Ethernet
Technology managed services provider ITEC collaborated with CityFibre partner Triangle to help Exeter based
food importer, Dalter UK, make poor connectivity a thing of the past
The requirement
Rapid growth for food importer
Dalter UK since 2011 meant
the limited bandwidth and
regular connectivity dropouts
from its copper based ADSL
lines were hampering the
business. With no Fibre to
the Cabinet available in their
location, the only option open
to them was a leased line -
which they’d held o on as they
felt it would be too costly for a
business of their size.
The solution
CityFibre installed a 500Mbps
leased line to Dalter in October
2018 with ITEC managing the
conguration of the routers to
complete the connection. e
cost eective and reliable full
bre connection from CityFibre
enabled ITEC to develop their
relationship with Dalter who
subsequently approached them
to manage their IT support a
well as their connectivity and
print. has found to be a highly
competitive option for its
customers.
The benefits
• A robust service level
agreement (SLA) from
CityFibre gives Dalter UK
condence in their full bre
connection.
• Clear communication from
CityFibre meant ITEC could
keep the customer fully
informed of the progress of
their connection.
• CityFibre’s end to end control
of provisioning enabled ITEC
to oer a full bre solution
with massive bandwidth
capacity which was connected
quickly and eciently and at
an aordable price.
Scenario
Dalter UK was set up in 2011
and grew quickly - reaching
10 employees and a turnover
of £18 million by 2017. From
the outset, the company’s IT
systems had been run on servers
located in the Italian company’s
oces - making good
communication very important.
And while the business was
still relatively small, a simple
broadband connection was
sucient. Steady growth led to
a relocation to larger premises
in 2017 though and despite the
addition of a second ADSL line
in the new premises, as activity
increased, the relatively low
bandwidth available began to
slow things down, as Joshua
explains:
“On the business park where
Dalter UK are located, there
was no bre to the cabinet
(FTTC), so they were running
on ADSL copper and the only
alternative was a leased line. For
a business of Dalter’s size, we
thought this was just overkill.”
For this reason, Dalter UK
had held back from installing a
faster line. Like many businesses
in this position, they had simply
learned to live with a slow and
substandard connection. In
this scenario it’s often hard
for businesses to imagine just
how much of a dierence a
connectivity upgrade can make
in terms of business eciencies,
exibility and productivity, but
Joshua assured them that the
CityFibre connection would
bring a dramatic change - due
to both higher speeds and vastly
improved reliability.
A solid platform for business
growth
e extra bandwidth was badly
needed by Dalter UK. Not
only because the company was
running everything – even
productivity apps – remotely
on the Italian parent company’s
servers, but also because
the security payload on the
connection is quite signicant.
is made reconnecting after
a connectivity dropped time
consuming – something that
tended to happen three or four
times every day with the old
ADSL connections. It also eats
up additional bandwidth.
In addition, Dalter UK has
the reassurance of a service level
agreement (SLA) that species
a ve hour x, so as Joshua says,
“they have the same service,
SLA and x times as a leased
line, but for a fraction of the
cost they’d have to pay for the
same speed.”
For its CityFibre 500Mbps
connection, Dalter UK is
paying about the same price it
would have expected to pay for
a 100Mbps leased line circuit
from other carriers, so it is great
value for the performance.
e customer is very happy
with what it’s received. Luc
Logan, Business Unit Manager
at Dalter UK, said: “e biggest
dierence is that we have a
stable connection now. Before,
especially with the low upload
speed of 1Mbps, our VPN
connection would keep dropping
out and that would happen quite
regularly, perhaps three or four
times a day. It was frustrating,
because we’d have to close down
and start-up again.
“Now we are working ten
hours a day and it’s a solid
connection. We are not using
all the capacity but that’s not a
problem because it’s aordable
and we are a growing business
– and we know that we can
increase the speed if we need
to.” While Dalter UK has a
500Mbps connection, the
CityFibre infrastructure in
Exeter can support speeds of
up to 1Gbps, should Dalter
UK ever require that kind of
capacity.
48 | Comms Business Magazine | June 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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