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Yorkshire Water deploys digital network |
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Thursday, 27 March 2008 |
Yorkshire Water, the
UK's fourth largest water and sewage company, has reinforced the defences of its daily operations through an advanced digital network from ntl:Telewest Business. The network investment strengthens the communications backbone that connects and underpins Yorkshire Water's operations at its 130 sites, meaning that major problems at individual sites do not have a broader impact. The enhancements to the network also provide Yorkshire Water with the foundations to roll out and utilise advanced communications services, such as Unified Communications and WiFi wireless network connectivity. This will help to enhance customer service by empowering operatives in the field with advanced communication tools, and also increase competitiveness through enabling flexible working practices to be adopted across the organisation in the future. Covering an area of more than 6,000 square miles, Yorkshire Water supplies 1.24 billion litres of drinking water every day - the equivalent of a glass of water for every person on the planet. The investment in the IPVPN (Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network) with MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) provides a secure, flexible and fully scalable infrastructure for carrying the company's voice and data traffic. The enhanced network has also enabled the company to adopt a new approach to communications management. By linking all sites centrally over the network, the utilities company benefits from greater flexibility in managing the flow of data between sites, as it is easier to locate and isolate any problems. Prior to the project being undertaken, network sites were linked through a 'daisy chain' system, which meant that when one site went offline it would take down the next site - and faults with major sites would impair the operations of at least six other locations. The enhancements to the private network, which became fully operational in January 2008, mean that each site is now connected centrally. In a separate project, ntl:Telewest Business has helped Yorkshire Water successfully migrate its back-end systems to a new data centre located in
Bradford. ntl:Telewest Business helped ensure a seamless integration by establishing and managing Wide Area Networks (WANs) at both sites, and by switching off the redundant WAN when the new office was connected to the ntl:Telewest Business network.
www.ntltelewestbusiness.co.uk |
