SIRO, Blacknight & Cartoon Saloon: Making Magic Happen

Cartoon Saloon was in the final stages of completing “Wolfwalkers”, one of the most eagerly anticipated animated features of the year, when COVID-19 broke out. Working with its broadband partner Blacknight, the Oscar-nominated animation studio was able to connect to SIRO’s Gigabit 100% fibre broadband network, the gold standard for internet connectivity, to ensure that a remote working solution could be put in place to enable them to put the finishing touches to their latest movie and other shows.

While hundreds of thousands are working remotely across Ireland, connectivity into the office has never been more important in terms of a company’s ability to serve their remote workforce. By connecting Cartoon Saloon’s studio in Kilkenny to SIRO’s Fibre-to-the-Building network this has doubled their bandwidth speed and increased the reliability and performance, enabling the company to provide access to large files and office applications remotely via a secure VPN solution as well as enabling employees, clients and partners access and share very large files across the globe.

Commenting on the partnership, Mark Mullery, Studio Technical Director, Cartoon Saloon, and Assistant Director of the new feature, Wolfwalkers said: “Gigabit broadband enabled new ways of working, giving us the capability to quickly share content with any corner of the globe, whether it’s Hollywood or Beijing. Reliable and fast remote access has been crucial since the initial lockdown and Blacknight were able to provide us with a seamless solution with SIRO’s Gigabit broadband service. As a result, we have been able to put the finishing touches to our latest feature with minimal delay.”

Michele Neylon, CEO and Co-founder, Blacknight added: “Remote workers have to be able to have the same digital experience no matter where they are working from and we have been able to provide Cartoon Saloon with the perfect solution thanks to SIRO’s Gigabit broadband network. Being able to tailor services for our customers specific needs has always been what has made Blacknight stand out from the competition, with the speed and capability of our rollout for Cartoon Saloon highlighting how we are helping businesses succeed despite COVID-19.”

Ronan Whelan, SIRO’s Chief Commercial Officer, also commented: “Since the outbreak of COVID-19, SIRO has been helping people and businesses across the country do life differently. Our Gigabit broadband network is on a par with what is available in Tokyo, which means that Cartoon Saloon’s employees and clients across the world have been able to successfully collaborate seamlessly using online services. The increased speed and reliability of their office internet link has been crucial to this success, as has employees improving the speed and reliability of their home internet by connecting to our Gigabit broadband.”

With nearly 100,000 customers across the globe, Blacknight is known as a market leader in the provision of hosting and co-location services ranging from small single web site hosting to complex backup, connectivity, colocation and security solutions.

As a SIRO retail partner, Blacknight is able to offer SME and Enterprise customers access to the wholesale broadband provider’s €450 million Gigabit broadband network, which is 100% Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and has no copper connections at any point to slow the service down. No other connection can compare with 100% fibre, which supports symmetric speeds of 1 Gigabit, 50 times the upload speeds of traditional copper networks.

The SIRO network now covers 351,000 premises, with services now live or under construction in 21 counties across the country. SIRO is offered on an open-access basis to all telecoms retailers in Ireland. Using the existing ESB network, SIRO delivers fibre optic cables all the way to the building. This technology, known as Fibre-to-the-Building, has no copper connections at any point to slow down the network and delivers 1 Gigabit speeds. For context, downloading a high definition movie that is 4 gigabytes in size with a standard 10 Mbps connection would usually take an hour. In contrast, it takes 30 seconds with SIRO’s Gigabit broadband.

Find out more about the SIRO 100% Fibre Network for Business.