Case Studies

Oxford Innovation

As well as offering technology commercialisation and economic development, Oxford Innovation supports innovative start-up companies in its 12 Innovation Centres across Oxfordshire and the South East. Each Centre offers a wide choice of services to boost the growth of businesses operating in a range of technology sectors. Services range from flexible office and laboratory space to access to funding from investment networks and regular networking events.

Such companies need a fast and reliable Internet connection. RedKite, a 10Mb symmetric wireless broadband service provided by CI-Net, has been installed at Oxford Centre for Innovation and has proved to be perfect for meeting their needs.

“We’re dealing with people who use cutting-edge technology, so we need to keep abreast of what’s going on and get the best solutions for our clients. We’ve got 29 companies here and obviously they want the fastest speed possible,” says Margaret Hewitt, Manager of OCFI.

“Two years ago, everybody just wanted Internet access but as we become more reliant on the Internet we need more bandwidth, which RedKite amply provides,” explains Peter Ellis, who manages the IT services.

Peter was initially a little nervous about the technology. “Wireless connections have a reputation for being unreliable in bad weather,” he says. “The week after RedKite was installed at OCFI, we actually had heavy snow and the service wasn’t affected. It works beautifully, whatever the weather.”

Reliability is key and one of the big attractions of RedKite is that it uses its own network infrastructure and so provides complete technical diversity from any BT provided or carried service.

“Another big plus is that it’s the same speed up and down, which ADSL isn’t. A few of us use Voice over IP within the company and that is a lot nicer over RedKite than over ADSL. It also makes sending large files and emails so much quicker than using an ADSL connection.”

As a pioneering organisation, Oxford Innovation has embraced the RedKite service.
“We are delighted to be working with Oxford Innovation, the UK’s leading operator of Innovation Centres. They demand the very best Internet access for their clients and have proactively sought to provide them with the very latest technical solution. Their clients can now enjoy exceptional speeds with the resulting increase in productivity,” said Stephen Hurst, Account Director of CI-Net, providers of the RedKite service.