Amey teams up with VX Fiber to bring Gigabit Full Fibre connectivity to military communities

04 Oct 2022

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Amey is teaming up with Swedish tech company VX Fiber to launch a pilot that will eventually aim to provide state of the art connectivity to military personnel across the country. 

The first phase of the project will take place at the Colchester Garrison in Essex which extends to approximately 1,000 premises and will begin with a series of consultation events. This is being facilitated by social enterprise consultants, e50K, who provide community engagement advice with particular focus on service personnel and their families. 

By installing full fibre direct into each premises this will allow residents to access broadband speeds that will be the fastest in the UK. In addition this fibre allows for innovation in many areas including energy management, IOT (internet of things) devices, and helping manage the built environment. 

Thomas Silvey, AMEY Operations Manager for defence commented: “We are delighted to start the consultation sessions for this project and hope to break ground for the fibre installation works before Christmas 2022. The Colchester Garrison is just one military community that is lacking reliable connectivity and this initiative will have a huge impact on the local community once the project is complete. This has been in the ideations stage for sometime and is now part of our ongoing strategy to improve military communities under the FDIS contract.” 

Richard Watts, Country Manager for VX Fiber UK said: “We are pleased to be working alongside AMEY and the MOD to facilitate this initiative alongside our wider deployment of full fibre in Colchester. This project will be transformative for the MOD and their serving families providing unparalleled quality and speed of connections. Our subsidiary company LilaConnect will initially be offering broadband service over the fibre but in the future we expect multiple providers to be offering service through our Open Access model. Our focus for this pilot will be on how it benefits the military community including access to children’s education online support, employment for military spouses as well as the quality communications you experience with full fibre."

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