GALASHIELS has become the latest business community in the Borders to benefit from a BT communications upgrade.
It involves BT’s ethernet technology and allows medium-sized businesses and other organisations to opt for the guaranteed broadband speed of their choice over their own dedicated line.
Customers can choose ethernet speeds between one megabit per second (Mbps) and 10 Gigabits per second (Gbits), depending on their needs. At the top rate of 10Gbits the system is capable of transmitting 10 billion bits of information per second.
The BT technology has already gone live in Peebles and Kelso. Medium-sized organisations using voice, data, video and other bandwidth-hungry applications across more than one site are the most likely users.
Ethernet is available on an open, wholesale basis to all communications companies providing business services.
Polly Purvis, executive director of ScotlandIS, the trade body for software, IT and creative technology businesses in Scotland, said: “Developments like this are key to enabling local firms and organisations across a wide variety of industry sectors to thrive and grow, as well as helping them to become more efficient in the way they communicate and do business in an increasingly competitive market place.”
Brendan Dick, BT Scotland director, added: “We believe high-speed ethernet will make the Borders even more attractive to potential inward investors and help existing businesses to work and communicate more effectively.”
The expansion of ethernet is in addition to the £2.5billion BT roll-out of super-fast optical fibre broadband, expected to reach two-thirds of the UK homes and businesses by the end of 2014.