The Hammersmith- headquartered London Interconnect Group, a consortium of cable operators with Greater London-based franchises, has announced Integrated Communications Network, a London-wide telecommunications service for businesses. The company says the network will provide Private Networks and Private Circuits, and access to national and international networks for multi-site organisations. Communications services will range from PABX-to-PABX connections through to multichannel high bandwidth circuits, with full intercommunications to other national and international telecommunications operators, says the company. The telephony package offers features such as Direct Dialling In, Call Waiting, Conference Call and Reminder functions. The network, which represents a pooling of the six companies’ networks, is said to encompass 4,375 miles of optical fibre.
Fully integrated
Despite suggestions of technical incompatibility, the group says the infrastructure is fully integrated, with fibre optic links to each organisation’s head-end nodes or hubs. The network is said to offer high-speed links from 2Mbps to 34Mbps, with circuits of 155Mbps upwards available if required. According the company, the Fibre Distributed Data Interface and Asynchronous Transfer Mode market will be heavily targeted. Tariff details were not revealed but will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and the companies are promising competitively priced installation and line rental services. The London Interconnect Group was formed earlier this year and comprises Cable London Ltd, The Cable Corp, Encom Cable TV & Telecommunications Ltd, Nynex CableComms Ltd, United Artists Communications Ltd and Videotron Holdings Plc. It is a partnership between the operators which ‘sits on top’ of their own organisations and represents an attempt by the cable minnows to take on British Telecommunications Plc and maximise cross-selling opportunities. It says it was created to provide a London-wide single point of customer contact for sales and service requirements, customer billing and access to national and international operators. The organisation runs on a revenue-sharing basis between the six with income split according to costs incurred by each.
