GO plc is installing 125 super fast fibre internet connections of up to and beyond 1 Gigabit in multiple venues across Malta ahead of the CHOGM. These connections will carry the huge telephony as well as fixed and mobile internet demands expected during the entire event which starts on 21 November with the Youth Forum and ends on 29 November following the Heads of Government Meeting and retreat at Fort St Angelo.

In addition to Fort St Angelo, the venues to which GO will be providing direct point to point fibre services include the Mediterranean Conference Centre, which will host the CHOGM opening ceremony, various hotels which are hosting delegations or fora, the international press centre in St Julian’s and other venues.  GO has also made substantial investments to upgrade its mobile network infrastructure capacity in specific locations around the CHOGM venues to meet the increased demands from delegates and the press.

Kurt Camilleri, Chief Commercial Officer at GO plc said, “As the official communications provider for both the Valletta Summit and CHOGM, this has been a challenging and exciting month for GO. In addition to telephony services, these global events require super fast connections, with a minimum of 200Mbps up to 1 Gigabit and beyond, to handle the vast amounts of real time data that is being processed. In addition to super fast speeds, these connections also need to be secure and reliable.”

During the recent Valletta Summit, the press centre at Fort St Elmo was, in fact, supplied with a bandwidth in excess of 1 Gigabit which catered for some 1,000 concurrent users. This was accomplished following the installation of 4.2 kilometres of fibre cable at the Fort.

At the Mediterranean Conference Centre, GO also supplied internet services over WIFI in every hall and common area with a bandwidth of 300 Mbps, which was used by up to 490 concurrent users.

‘The use of historic venues like Fort St Elmo and now Fort St Angelo present particular logistical challenges as the services need to be delivered without touching the fabric of these magnificent buildings and without wires or cables being visible. In GO, however, Malta has a communications provider that has both the technical and the human resources to meet the most demanding challenges,” concluded Mr Camilleri.