Creative & Digital

Manchester is Europe’s second largest creative, digital and media hub and the industry is growing faster here than anywhere else in the UK. With strengths in everything from film and TV to games development, the diversity of the sector puts Manchester in a great position to take advantage of new opportunities brought about by media and technology convergence.

Over £3.5 billion of investment has been made by both the public and private sector in the last few years to ensure that the industry continues to develop and thrive here.

The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Salford are collectively home to over 92,000 students across every creative discipline. They generate over 27,000 graduates each year providing a large, highly skilled talent pool that Manchester’s creative businesses are able to tap in to.

University courses provided include television and radio production, virtual reality, animation, computer and video games, multi-platform technologies and special effects design.

Manchester also benefits from all the main telecoms carriers and all of the UK’s fibre networks converging at its heart. MaNAP (Manchester Network Access Point) is a major internet traffic hub that serves the UK’s access to worldwide networks and provides the only internet exchange point in England outside London.

At the heart of Manchester’s digitisation

Teaming up with Manchester Digital Development Agency, the Corridor has installed new fibre optic cables that will allow residents and businesses on the Corridor to directly connect to next generation fibre broadband, creating a true open access network which will revolutionise ways of working and using digital communications.

The most immediate impact for people living and working on the Corridor will be much faster broadband capacity of around 100 Megabits per second (MBps) and more critically, for both download and upload uses. Users will be able to buy services from different service providers on the network providing internet access, TV, telephone and other data services too, as the new network will be genuinely “open access” allowing all service providers to lease the optical fibre to provide services to their customers. There is also potential for services and applications to be made available for free without having to go through an internet service provider.

The Corridor digitisation project is managed by MDDA and funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA). The core network is now in place and direct connections are being rolled out.