Telecommunications

Visionary government investment coupled with private enterprise has resulted in an infrastructure capable of meeting all of the Island's telecommunications needs for the foreseeable future. Our expanding data centre facilities provide exceptional capacity for hosting and protecting mission critical data and are more than capable of supporting new cloud computing concepts. Our transmission and distribution networks enable the Island's business community to access all telecommunications platforms, protocols and applications and to therefore enjoy faster and more efficient business processes, protected by superior infrastructure resilience.

World class telecommunications infrastructure

Carrier class connectivity to and from the Island is provided via five discrete fibre cables, owned by BT, Cable and Wireless and the government-owned e-llan Communications Ltd which allow the creation of high bandwidth fibre optic rings connecting the Island with the North of England and Ireland. These links can employ 'self-healing' SDH loop technology which guarantees that if a fault occurs at any part of the link, voice and data traffic is seamlessly re-routed in the other direction. Similar resilient ring technology is also used on the Island's delivery networks. Due to improving technology which is delivering more and more progressive telecommunications equipment, the transmission capacity available to the Island can be numbered in Terrabytes effctively future-proofing the Island's telecommunications needs.

The Isle of Man's telecommunications infrastructure provides services which cater for the full range of modern corporate voice and data communications requirements. Manx Telecom, Cable & Wireless and e-llan Communications offer services under telecommunications licenses granted by the Isle of Man Communications Commission and which are approved by Tynwald. A number of ISPs and IT companies also provide corporate network and related services. As a result of significant investment, the Island now has 100% ADSL broadband availability to both households and business premises. In November 2005, Manx Telecom became the world’s first company to offer a HSDPA (3.5G) service. 2011 will see the launch of Manx Telecom's NGN (Next Generation Network), the first of its kind in the world. At a cost of around £25 million, this will bring the Island all the benefits of fully converged telecommunications and entertainment.

Cable & Wireless has invested over £10m in the Isle of Man to create competition through its innovative consumer brand “Sure”.

Sure offer an extended range of services for fixed and mobile telecommunications.

The Island is also served by four state of the art data hosting centres owned and operated by Manx Telecom, Domicilium, Continent 8 and Netcetera and collectively representing in excess of £30 million investment. A new data centre operated by W-Manx will shortly be commissioned.

The Isle of Man was one of the first countries to pass dedicated e business legislation with the introduction of the Electronic Transactions Act in November 2000. Additional business continuity regulations introduced in 2002 enable banks, investment businesses and corporate service providers which are regulated in approved jurisdictions to use Isle of Man based computer servers in the event of catastrophic failure.

The Island’s strong position in financial services and e business make it the perfect location for companies in the business of electronic trading platform development.

The Island also has a sophisticated internet hosting infrastructure. There is a choice of service providers whose range of services include hosting, managed services, internet security services, connectivity and consultancy. Web hosting business solutions are offered to businesses of all sizes.

Supporting this strong market sector is an extremely robust and reliable power network which is the envy of the UK operators in terms of its customer minutes lost performance. With plenty of spare generating capacity, diverse fuel supplies and connection to third party electricity and gas grid systems, there is no barrier to growth.

The Isle of Man telecommunications and IT infrastructure may be summarised as follows:

• Resilient high capacity fibre optic cables connecting the Island to the North of England and Ireland with multiple carrier diversity
• State of the art business continuity/disaster recovery facilities widely available
• Part of the UK numbering range
• Supported by an ample power system with fast connection opportunities
• High broadband penetration
• Island wide mobile data
• Quality of service to world standards
• High quality web hosting/co-location
• 100% broadband availability
• Short lead times for telephone and broadband installation
• Higher speed connectivity for business available via extensive Island wide fibre and radio networks