Leeds is set to become one of UK’s most advanced business and financial areas by installing a high speed fibre network. The plan is to roll out connectivity throughout the city’s business district with Internet speeds of up to 100 megabit per second, at least ten times faster than the national average.

The service is currently exclusive to The Calls area, birthplace of Internet pioneer Freeserve and popular amongst the city’s media and marketing agencies including, VTR whom are amongst the first businesses to trial the service.

VTR North is a specialist post production and editing suite that requires high speed media connectivity to London-based companies. It agreed to a trial that would run a fibre network with gigabit capacity, directly into the building from a major hub only a few hundred metres away. Since the trial VTR have experiencing a range of benefits including sending and receiving files at ‘jaw dropping speeds’.

Carl Waters, Managing Director of VTR, summarises the productivity the benefits of the high speed fibre : “We can now upload 40 commercials in an hour to our London-based partners as opposed to 45 minutes per commercial. Unlike some of the regional initiatives which have been set up to achieve this, our connection is delivered to our desktop and allows us to access every media company in the country.”

Since the trial there have been a growing number of businesses looking to install the high-speed cables and gain the benefits of the service. Aql, the network operator is planning to expand its network throughout other areas of Leeds city centre thorough 2010.