Council signs £1.3million WAN contract

Rochdale Council is spending up to £1.3m on a new WAN, reports The Guardian.

The WAN is intended to improve broadband access to an initial 130 sites, including all primary schools and council sites which, when complete, will be ready to link up to the PSN.

More than 4,000 PCs, 4,000 phones and 5,000 individual users will be connected by the network.

The first site to be linked will be the town's leisure centre in April, and the last will be a new head office building in the centre of the town in August.

The contract to supply the WAN, won by Updata, will save the council £300,000 a year on the cost of paying existing supplier BT to migrate to a new network, according to its ICT strategy and planning manager Helen Gerling.

The will produce no other "immediate cost benefits, but there are wider business benefits", Gerling said.

"Rochdale will have a future-proofed, scalable and resilient network that will support flexible working across the borough. It will provide the ability to add or remove any connections at a lower cost and without disruption to the rest of the network," she added.

The contract will also extend high-speed broadband access out to private sector businesses within the borough.

"What we required of the companies responding to the tender was evidence to show the positive impact on the local community, particularly local businesses," said Gerling. "So respondents were not just assessed in the cost and the solution, they were also assessed on the value for money for the wider area."

The contract has been signed for an initial three years at a cost of approximately £1m, but it could be extended by two further 12 months terms, taking the value up to £1.3m. It was signed as part of a framework arrangement available to all Greater Manchester councils.