A next-GENERATION telecoms network which claims to be the first that is wholly-owned in Scotland is to be given its full launch later this month, targeting 300 business customers.

Commsworld, an £8.6 million-turnover company based in Edinburgh, has developed a high-speed business-only network for transferring fast data and voice services across Scotland.

The network (NGN) is powered by Fluency, the ISP acquired by Commsworld last October for an undisclosed sum. The firm claims it will "allow Scottish companies to better compete against business rivals in the UK and Europe by providing quicker access to data and avoiding 'bottlenecks' on existing networks".

It has secured the business of over 50 companies since its soft launch in January 2013.

The sites are either live on the network or are in the process of becoming live.

NGNs transport all information services, including telephony, video calls, data sharing, instant messaging, voicemail, email and text on a single high-speed network.

Commsworld says the network, initially serving Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, will let Scottish companies compete by improving efficiency, disaster recovery and access to cloud-based services.

While companies often focus on download speed to deliver fast applications, businesses also suffer from lag or latency – the time taken between a computer user requesting an action and it happening.

This delay is often more pronounced in wide-area networks (WANs), which transmit data over long distances.

The newly-upgraded Fluency network claims to offer latency of two milliseconds between Edinburgh and Glasgow, compared with up to 15 milliseconds from non-Scottish telecoms companies. It also boasts latency of nine milliseconds, 50% lower than competitors, on data traffic between central Scotland and London, and four milliseconds between Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Commsworld, founded in 1994, is expecting to achieve £9.8 turnover this year, and ascribes the performance to data being routed in major Scottish cities rather than via London.

Ricky Nicol, Commsworld's chief executive, said: "We have a target of over 300 sites for 2013. This is made up of over 50 sites we have already secured in the first quarter of 2013 and additional response from public-sector and corporate deals we are working on.

"We made a soft launch of our Fluency next-generation network in January 2013 with controlled expansion to data centres in February 2103, and [we are] going fully live from next month as we bring exchanges on line throughout the country."