GUEST COLUMN:
James Kemp
Director
Jellyfish Business Solutions
Connectivity is rarely the first thing business owners talk about when they discuss growth. They will mention recruitment, premises and customers. Yet reliable connectivity sits underneath all of those decisions. Without it, expansion becomes harder than it needs to be.
I have worked in telecoms in South Wales for nearly 30 years and, for much of that time, connectivity in parts of Cardiff, including the city centre, has been a source of frustration. Businesses have often faced a stark choice: accept slow broadband that struggles to cope with modern demands or pay for a leased line costing several hundred pounds a month. For many SMEs, neither option was ideal.
Jellyfish Business Solutions was established in 2019 with a simple ethos: a local company looking after local companies. Our customer base is predominantly small and medium-sized businesses across South Wales. Connectivity is one of our three core areas, alongside managed print and IT services, and it is often the area where constraints first become apparent.
The introduction of Cardiff’s hypercity network has begun to change that picture. The network consists of 170 kilometres of new full-fibre infrastructure installed across large parts of the city following a collaboration between Cardiff Council, the Welsh Government and Elevate, which won the tender to build it. It provides Cardiff with its own independent, state-of-the-art fibre network capable of delivering speeds of up to 10Gbps. For many businesses, it offers a practical middle ground between slow copper connections and expensive leased lines.
We are seeing the impact most clearly among SMEs with between 10 and 50 staff. I recently worked with a car repair business employing four or five office staff and up to 20 in the workshop. They had been relying on mobile broadband because no fixed connectivity was available. The only alternative was a leased line at close to £500 a month. With access to the hypercity network, that situation has changed. They now have functional broadband at a cost that makes sense for their size and scale.
The difference is not simply about speed; it is about headroom. If a business is already operating on limited bandwidth, adding more staff will only compound the problem. Video calls become unreliable. Cloud systems lag. Day-to-day frustrations accumulate. By contrast, stronger connectivity allows firms to expand headcount and adopt new technologies without worrying that the underlying infrastructure will hold them back.
That matters as we look ahead to developments such as artificial intelligence and further migration to cloud-based services. I am already seeing practical AI applications within telecoms platforms, including systems that can answer calls, route enquiries and respond to common questions. Those tools can reduce repetitive tasks and allow staff to focus on more productive work. But they rely on stable, high-capacity broadband. The same applies to Voice over IP systems, which many businesses are now adopting. Without sufficient connectivity, those solutions are simply not viable.
It also changes the conversation around premises. In the past, connectivity constraints have influenced where businesses felt able to locate.
In some parts of Cardiff, broadband speeds have been extremely limited and improving them has meant committing to a costly leased line.
For many SMEs, that combination of poor speed and high cost has restricted their options and, in some cases, delayed or deterred office moves altogether. The availability of an alternative through the hypercity network reduces that constraint, giving businesses greater confidence that a new location will not bring unforeseen connectivity challenges.
For SMEs, this ultimately becomes a question of future-proofing. If your infrastructure limits what you can implement, it limits your ability to compete. The hypercity network removes one of those barriers by making higher speeds more accessible within Cardiff.
For a long time, connectivity in Cardiff has been something businesses have worked around rather than relied upon. The introduction of a dedicated full-fibre network changes that dynamic. It provides a foundation on which other decisions – whether about AI, telecoms, staffing or premises – can be made with greater confidence.
Growth is rarely about one factor alone. But when the underlying infrastructure is fit for purpose, it removes friction. For SMEs looking to adopt new technologies and scale sustainably, that makes a tangible difference.
