University connects its Swansea campuses with new ‘dark fibre’ network
The new data link is part of Swansea Bay City Deal’s Digital Infrastructure Programme who have worked with Virgin Media O2 Business to build a dark fibre network loop across the University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s sites in Swansea.
Dark fibre network offers practically limitless capacity and speeds, with the innovative loop configuration ensuring a continuous data flow between educational sites.
The university says this will benefit research, teaching, and collaboration across the academic landscape. The network, which is only accessible to linked sites, will also provide secure, high-speed, and scalable connectivity, improving the efficiency of internal systems, whilst providing increased capacity to increase to suit the demands of the sector.
The network will immediately increase bandwidth to 40Gbps, with the potential for 100Gbps between campuses in the future. This means all Swansea campuses are now connected at exceptionally high speeds that are usually only available at a single campus location, with future proofing for even higher speeds.
The university says this will enable high-flex teaching, ultra-high-quality video streaming, and immersive learning environments, while also supporting future research, as well as smart campus solutions to enhance efficiency and sustainability.
James Cale at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David said: “This is an exciting phase where we will now start to tangibly see the benefits of a dark fibre network across campuses. The ability to fully exploit technology within a class or research environment offers both academics and students a far wider range of opportunities, whist making our sites more data secure, something that is widely needed to future proof further education in this region.”
Cllr. Rob Stewart, Leader of Swansea Council and Chair of the Swansea Bay City Deal Joint Committee said: “This is a fantastic milestone in the region’s plan to adopt emerging technology into our public sector services. Creating more robust ways of collaborating, data sharing and ways of researching is a fundamental aspect of how we build best practices across our education and healthcare sites, that will only open up more innovation opportunities in the future.”
On completion, the dedicated dark fibre network will connect 36 public sector sites throughout Swansea and Neath Port Talbot, including local authorities, healthcare and education partners.
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