Park Hill agency first in South Yorkshire to install Superfast Broadband

Park Hill, the major Sheffield residential and commercial development, uses Idaq to provide Superfast Broadband for businesses located at Park Hill with the government voucher scheme, and Uber agency becomes the first to benefit in South Yorkshire.

A full service agency, Uber was one of the first businesses to move into the Park Hill commercial spaces.

The agency has become the first in South Yorkshire to receive a voucher for superfast broadband under a £40m scheme. Uber spent the £3k grant on a wireless connection supplied by Sheffield-based Idaq Networks, taking its broadband speeds from 6Mbps to 300Mps.

Richard Benjamin, joint managing director, Uber: “We have clients around the globe and fast reliable broadband is essential to our business. We are transferring huge files containing video, music and sound as well as doing video calls so we can’t afford for the connection to fail. It was as simple as a flip of a switch and then everything increased incredibly. Now we are connected it means we can keep pace with future demands too.”

George Taylor, co-founder, Idaq Networks, added: “It’s great that we’ve been able to help Uber overcome an issue they’ve had for a while and their new icnos connection will bring them significant and tangible business benefits. Park Hill is becoming a hub for businesses in this sector and for those companies that are embracing technology. We are now talking to a number of future tenants who are also eligible to take advantage of the vouchers that take care of the upfront costs.”

Simon Gawthorpe, managing director of Urban Splash, also commented: “We have signed up a further seven businesses to join Human and Uber at Park Hill and by the end of the year we expect the final few units to be taken. It is essential that we can provide a reliable, fast broadband connection that also has the capability to expand the provision as technology and the market demands. IDAQ is able to do this and we are aware that the company is servicing many other businesses in the city too. Park Hill is now equipped to spread the service provided by IDAQ to other business users based there.”

Idaq now has nine cell sites covering 100% of the city centre, the Advanced Manufacturing Park and parts of Rotherham. The company also provide services to Sheffield City Region, rather than being a reseller of internet services.

Furthermore, Idaq continues to work with the BDUK team and Sheffield City Council to ensure regionally-based companies benefit from the voucher scheme.

At the beginning of April, Sheffield City Region joined 49 other UK cities in the Government’s Super Connected Cities programme run by Broadband Delivery UK, which is part of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

Under the voucher scheme, companies apply to BDUK but Idaq has been pre-approved for six connections allowing it to choose the client.

Nationally, the Government is investing £1bn in improving broadband and mobile infrastructure to provide superfast broadband coverage to 90% of the UK by 2016 and 95% by 2017 and create 22 ‘SuperConnected Cities’ across the UK by 2015.

Warp films, Cloaked, Yoomee, Airship, Kada Research, Can Studios and Alpha Recruitment will joinUber and Human at Park Hill this year.

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