Julie Blackburn speaks to Iarla Hughes, chief financial officer at Manx Telecom, about how connectivity and resilience can provide a big opportunity for the Isle of Man and how the company’s diversification is playing its part.

For Manx Telecom, current challenges – and equally opportunities – arise from our voracious appetite for data.

This is growing at around 30% each year as more and more aspects of our lives become connected via the internet. Think of all the apps on our phones that allow us to check who’s at our front door, or what’s in our fridge,find out where the bus we are waiting for has got to, or Facetime a friend.

Then add on all the working from home during the pandemic, all the calls via Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and the vital access to companies’ systems and data so that staff could work remotely.

This has all got to be good news for a small island in the middle of the Irish Sea, allowing it to do business globally, but only so long as it remains connected to the outside world. Because all the virtual stuff – the cloud storage and the gadgets – ultimately relies on a core network and infrastructure linking with connectivity off the island which allows the data to flow.

For the last 20 years or more, the island’s connectivity has been via undersea cables owned by Vodafone and BT but this is about to change, as Iarla explains: ‘These links are getting a good bit older now so, for risk reasons and because the level of data that’s required is increasing at massive rates, we are just in the process of doing a deal with a company called Aqua Comms.

‘They are a large global undersea cabling company with big submarines and ships rolling fibre from America to Ireland, through the Isle of Man, then through the UK and on up to the Nordics, as part of their recently launched CeltixConnect-2 and North Sea Connect projects.

‘These are partially funded by Facebook for their data needs for all their users globally and we are buying some of that capacity to secure and ensure the island’s needs going forward from a data perspective.

‘For us, dedicated bandwidth – dedicated capacity – is vitally important, not only for Manx Telecom but for the island. The links that are there at the moment, they have a finite life, so us being able to invest ourselves and own that infrastructure is fantastic.

‘From a business perspective it creates a guarantee for companies investing in the Isle of Man, whether that’s multinational companies or indeed companies in the island already, about being able to operate as a global business.

‘It’s crucial. Data has become nearly as important as electricity because you cannot work without it.

‘It’s critical national infrastructure.’

This also provides the opportunity for Manx Telecom to further expand its reach into the UK with its two other businesses: OV, which stands for ‘Of Vannin’ and Synapse 360.

Iarla sits on the board of Manx Telecom and is also involved with the running of both these companies.

‘Synapse 360 is based on island and in Manchester, and the OV business has a lot of business globally but a lot through the UK as well. We are growing these two businesses extremely quickly and successfully. But what we’re trying to do, where we can, is to employ in the Isle of Man and we’ve now got more than 400 people. The majority of those are based on island.’

And he goes on: ‘Because of the type of business we are, we feel that we’ve got a unique opportunity. We’re the same as any other telco in terms of the investment needed – we need a core network, we need tower connectivity, we need undersea fibre connectivity – but because of the size (of our on-island customer base) there is a limit on the amount of usage we can get through, so we’ve got spare capacity.’

It all comes back to the infrastructure which provides that capacity and also provides a big opportunity for the Isle of Man itself, as Iarla explains.

He says: ‘We have two datacentres built to Tier 3 design standard and these are at the centre of our hosting services in the island.

‘We recently re-signed with all of the Isle of Man Government on a 10-year contract and a number of the large gaming companies would be in our datacentres, but we’re also hosting a lot of off-island companies through Synapse 360, which is basically a cloud business across the Isle of Man and the UK.

‘Synapse has been very successful in the UK market. Whether it’s with airports, law firms, local authorities or large global companies, we’ve been very successful in providing their cloud requirements globally from the Isle of Man over the last two to three years.

‘Now we see there being a big opportunity for the Isle of Man from a datacentre perspective because, if you look at datacentres, the big thing is resilience and data recovery and disaster recovery.

‘You could argue the Isle of Man is like a datacentre in itself because it’s so secure. It’s an island between the UK and Ireland, and we feel that there’s a huge USP for the Isle of Man to be the go-to place in Europe for datacentres, for hosting, for capacity and for disaster recovery.’

Manx Telecom’s other business, OV, is all about IoT, or Internet of Things.

Quite simply, this means ‘things’ communicating with one another, via the internet.

Controlling a robot lawnmower remotely via your phone would be a good example and OV provides this on a much larger scale.

Iarla says: ‘Because of OV’s international focus, many people on the island don’t know about OV and it’s a really interesting business.

‘We have more than five million connections around the world in machines, whether that’s tracking cars; whether that’s tracking street lights, to make sure they’re coming on and off at the right time, or whether that’s tracking cargo going from South America to the United States.

‘Every Costa coffee vending machine around the world has a Manx Telecom SIM card [connecting it to the internet] in it and a lot of the Uber vehicles around the world have Manx Telecom SIMs.

‘That’s five million connections around the world, all managed through Manx Telecom in the Isle of Man.’

And, in a sort of virtuous circle, revenues for these businesses come back to the island and allow Manx Telecom to invest in the infrastructure and the community.

Iarla says: ‘One thing that we try really hard to do is put money back into the island – in my opinion more than any other company.

‘We passionately believe in the island, in hiring locally and looking after the community.

‘It’s the way we want to do business because, whilst we think it’s great to try and grow and be successful, without the Isle of Man and the Isle of Man community and Isle of Man customers, really and truly we have no business.’