Belfast, Wednesday 6th August 2008 

TITANIC QUARTER ANNOUNCES REDSTONE PLC AS PARTNER FOR DEVELOPMENT OF NEXT GENERATION FIBRE NETWORK 

Titanic Quarter Ltd announced today that Redstone plc has been granted exclusive rights to develop an advanced ‘fibre to the home’ infrastructure for the £5.5bn (€7bn) regeneration scheme in Belfast.    

All future residential and business occupants of Titanic Quarter will have access to fully fibred high-speed and high quality Telecoms, Internet, IP Television and a range of innovative services. 

The network will initially be able to support the delivery of services to households at up to 100Mb/s in both directions.  Gigabit capacities will be available for businesses. 

The network will be openly available to all Communications/Service Providers (CSP’s) on a wholesale basis and they will not be constrained by the limitations of last generation copper networks. 

Titanic Quarter further announced that Bytel is the first Interconnect Provider to agree to provide backhaul services for other CSP’s.   Bytel is an established champion of open access  backhaul networks and also provides the only Tier 1 Internet Gateway in Northern Ireland. 

Announcing the appointment of Redstone plc, Mike Smith, Chief Executive of Titanic Quarter said, “Our access network is designed to be future-proofed and to maximise the competitive choice of services for all occupants. “ 

Martin Balaam, CEO of Redstone plc., further announced that:“Our role is to provide carrier-class but carrier-independent design and management expertise.   The network will adopt Open Access technology already proven in advanced countries such as Sweden where more than half of the local communities now benefit from high speed local networks operated independently of the incumbent Telco and other communications providers”.   

Michael Graham, Director Corporate Real Estate for Titanic Quarter, said, “This network reflects our determination to compete at a global level.  We see the Titanic Quarter network as a  model that can be replicated across the UK and we look forward to working with Redstone plc to develop further interest from the property sector and amongst local and regional authorities” 

The finalisation of contractual details between Titanic Quarter Limited and Redstone plc is expected to be completed in September and will be the subject of further announcements. 

-ENDS- 

For more information please contact:

Eleanor Anderson, Stakeholder Communications, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  028 9033 9949/07834101627 

Notes to Editors 

About Titanic Quarter:

Titanic Quarter (www.titanic-quarter.com ) is an urban mixed-use regeneration of a 185-acre site in central Belfast, Northern Ireland.   The £5.5bn (€7bn) development has been identified by the Urban Studies and Planning department of MIT  as one of a handful of world-class sites designated as ‘New Century Cities’.     

In its initial phases Titanic Quarter will include:

• up to 5,000 residential units,
• a Financial Services Centre with first occupant the banking organisation Citi 
• a new integrated campus facility for Belfast Metropolitan College, serving 17,000 students,
• several major new and historic tourist attractions, hotels and public spaces,
• the new HQ for the NI Public Records Office
• and a world-class Creative Media campus clustered around the ‘Paint Hall’ studio complex.

 The Queen’s Island site already houses the 25-acre Northern Ireland Science Park with a multi-user Innovation Centre, an electronic communications and information technology research institute for Queens University Belfast and a purpose-built software development centre for the global bank Citi.   Furthermore the site is at the centre of an extensive public sector trial of broadband mobility utilising systems conformant to the recently-approved IEEE802.20 Standard.  It is expected to house the hub of the European Centre for Connected Health announced in January 2008 and will be competing for large-scale advanced data-centre facilities to serve the fast-growing market for ‘cloud computing’.  

About Redstone plc: 

• Redstone plc (AIM:RED) is a leading provider of IT and Communications solutions for businesses and organisations of all types and sizes.  The company currently employs in excess of 1300 people across 10 UK offices including Ireland.
• The company has partnerships with major equipment suppliers including Cisco and Packetfront and has offices in Belfast and Dublin in addition to it’s offices in GB
• The requirements for Titanic Quarter demand a ‘carrier class but carrier independent’ position conformant with emergent regulation for Next Generation Access (NGA) networks.

For more information see www.redstone.co.uk 

 About Open Access Networks:

• The Titanic Quarter network will be based on a Point-to-Point active Ethernet star technology. The design requires the complete management separation of Access and Services – the latter being provided by a range of providers who will use the Access network on a wholesale basis.
• In ‘Open Access’ networks the economic justification for high-speed capacity is not based on the search for a single ‘killer-application’ but on the use of each fibre to deliver multiple concurrent services from many providers.  The successful management of Open Access networks is measured in terms of the range and competitive choice of services available to all users and the ease with which consumers can switch between providers.