‘Telehouse’ just the same as other POPs

The Fort George container’s parity with other access points suggests the 2009 campaign to bring the Project Kelvin ‘Telehouse’ to Londonderry instead of Coleraine made no difference.

The ‘Save Our Telehouse’ clamour was largely focused on the potential jobs benefits but since the Fort George facility became operational in March 2010 the dole claimant rate in Londonderry has risen from 7.4 per cent of working people to 8.4 per cent of working people.

The campaign successfully resulted in the establishment of an “exchange centre” in the city due to the prohibition of the ‘Telehouse’ term under European Union trademark law despite the word ‘telehouse’ appearing in the original government tender for the project.

Londonderry was originally up in arms after it emerged the city was to have a Point of Presence rather than a “telehouse” which was to be built in Coleraine but that’s exactly what we now have.

The Sentinel can now reveal the tele-exchange at Fort George is a Point of Presence just like seven others in Northern Ireland.

Two years after the ‘Telehouse’ campaign and the tele-exhange subsequently going live the Sentinel asked Hibernia Atlantic how many telecoms companies, carriers or businesses have directly connected to the Fort George facility.

The telecoms firm replied: “Hibernia has successfully sold connectivity to many service providers, content delivery network operators, financial exchanges and local and global enterprise firms. All of these customers required additional capacity to and from Northern Ireland, to support their high-performance networks.”

The firm said it “could not give specific numbers or names” and that it was “difficult to fully calculate as our carrier and reseller channels enable many more local companies to connect for Internet and fixed line access that Hibernia would be unaware of.”

However, the firm revealed the Fort George building is no different to the other Points of Presence province-wide.

“Fort George is 1 of 8 Points of Presence in Northern Ireland that are ‘Open Access’ locations for connectivity to Hibernia’s 27,000km global network,” the firm told the paper.

All of this accords with what Vice-President of network operations at Hibernia Atlantic Derek Bullock told the Stormont Enterprise Committee in 2009 before the pointless row over Tele-gate.

Mr Bullock explained then how “carriers in the region will connect into the tele-house, in the same way that they will connect into every single point of presence in every other town. Carriers will connect where they have the closest access.”

He said any Point of Presence on the network would create “exactly the same opportunities.”

“Whether the point of presence is put into a business park or a business park is built up around the point of presence; that is where people will connect into. The point of presence becomes a meet-me room, and a meet-me room is where the carriers connect into,” he stated.

Obsevers of Londonderry’s Fort George site will be aware there is as yet no business park on the site although there are proposals to build a science park.

Mr Bullock explained three years ago that “we are not building a 130ft-tall tele-house similar in scale to Telehouse London or Telex at 60 Hudson Street; we are bringing the cable ashore, breaking it into transmission and providing some collocation facilities, if that is what people want.

“Those facilities are going to be at all the other points of presence. I could understand concerns if we were building a supersized data centre tele-house employing 100 people, and one area got it rather than another. However, this is a very small percentage of the project.”

In response to the Sentinel’s questions on the facility Londonderry regeneration company ILEX, which leases the tele-exchange site to Hibernia Atlantic, confirmed the “firm has a network throughout Ulster and provides transatlantic and European connectivity to other local telecoms companies including Virgin, Eircom and BT etc, and the number of individual users would be quite considerable.”

A spokeperson stated: “ILEX has leased the site to Hibernia Atlantic, who permits telecoms companies to directly connect to the Fort George telehouse.

“These telecoms companies encourage other businesses to then connect to their network. ILEX is not responsible or involved in granting permission to the telehouse as the lease allows Hibernia Atlantic to operate its business in a commercial manner, without need for recourse to ILEX, DSD or Derry City Council for individual approval.

“Hibernia Atlantic is not required to notify ILEX that telecoms companies, carriers or businesses have directly connected to or were due to directly connect to the Fort George telehouse.”

Investment Minister Arlene Foster was recently asked to outline how many jobs have been created and businesses attracted as a result of Project Kelvin.

She said it was “not possible to align a company’s decision to invest solely with the benefits provided by Project Kelvin.”

She added: “Northern Ireland’s telecoms infrastructure, including the direct transatlantic link provided by Project Kelvin, contributes to the positioning of the region as a location capable of providing solutions to the business needs of both new and existing investors.

“Other factors also contribute to the Northern Ireland proposition, including our highly capable workforce, our proximity to customers and the support provided by Invest NI.

“Invest NI has identified the benefits provided by Project Kelvin and incorporated these into its sales messages. Invest NI also works closely with all local telecoms suppliers to position the benefits with customers.

“While it is certain that Project Kelvin has enhanced Northern Ireland’s attractiveness to potential investors, it is not possible to directly attribute investment to one infrastructural element and quantify the outcomes in terms of jobs created and business attracted.”