Lieutenant Governor Sir John Lorimer KCB DSO MBE visited to Manx Telecom headquarters recently where he learned about the company’s 130-year history and its role as telecommunications provider in the island.

The governor was welcomed by chief executive officer, Gary Lamb, and began his tour by planting a crab apple tree in the grounds of the company’s office in the Isle of Man Business Park.

Staff volunteers are working in partnership with Manx Wildlife Trust to redevelop the gardens to encourage greater biodiversity and protect the local environment.

Inside the building, Sir John was shown a timeline of major events in Manx Telecom’s development as a company and a display of past telecommunications equipment dating back to the early days of telephony.

Sir John was particularly interested in Manx Telecom’s current fibre broadband rollout programme and enjoyed a demonstration of how fibre optics work and the connection process from exchange to customer premises.

He also learned about Manx Telecom’s subsidiary companies – IT managed services provider and Cloud and data protection specialist Synapse360, and the IoT connectivity and international smart SIM solutions provider OV – and how they will be critical to future growth in the UK and in other international markets.

Throughout the afternoon, the Lieutenant Governor met a number of Manx Telecom’s frontline staff, plus members of the customer service and fibre broadband teams.

proud

Mr Lamb said: ‘We have always been very proud of our commitment to keeping the Isle of Man connected and it was a pleasure to demonstrate how the business has developed over the years.

‘We were keen to show that, with our ongoing investment in infrastructure and in developing our people, we will continue to do this and that we plan to achieve much more in the coming years.

‘Sir John was very interested in all the different elements of our business and how they work together to provide our services to the public as well as to businesses and the government. Our staff really enjoyed his visit.’