We love going the extra mile to meet our clients’ timescales and budgets, all while delivering best-in-class microwave radio networks. In this project, our team excelled in designing & deploying the network in a matter of months. If you have a similar objective, get in touch.
Requirement
Our client, a leading UK air traffic control service provider issued us with a contract to provide network connectivity to UK air traffic control services, which handles millions of flights and passengers every year. The contract was based around critical national infrastructure through Wide Area Network connectivity to support their new IP-based voice services.
The new IT infrastructure was an integral part of the customer’s commitment towards SESAR (the Single European Sky ATM Research programme), which aimed to develop technologies to enhance European airspace performance – increasing capacity, improving safety, reducing delays and airline costs, and reducing environmental impacts.
The requirement was to design and build a network to connect the client to fibre exchanges where fibre services were unavailable at the time. The deployment needed to be fast and cost-effective, and the network needed to be able to withstand extreme environments in remote areas of the UK. All while integrating seamlessly with the current multi-vendor environment.
Solution
As part of our solution, we signed an agreement with the customer to provide a five-year managed service solution, with the option to extend to ten years. Under this agreement we designed a microwave radio network for selected areas throughout the United Kingdom, including outer Scottish Islands. The network connects the customer’s sites into BT fibre-enabled exchanges and provides route diversification. The network was deployed wherever fibre services are not available or cost prohibitive, compounded by fibre deployment timescales in excess of twelve months.
We designed the network using our in-house project and engineering teams, in line with availability and throughput requirements requested by the customer. We deployed the network and retained full ownership and operation of the network for the duration of the contract. We provided ongoing maintenance and support services in line with SLA requirements. We also had overall control of the network, maintaining it through our 247/365 Network Operations Centre (NOC), based in Solihull.
In addition to this we had full responsibility for maintaining all site leases with organisations such as Arqiva, WIG and BT, maintaining all Ofcom licensing. With the network operating within remote areas of the UK, often within environments with climatic extremes including salt conditions. Being able to withstand these extremes was of critical importance to the customer. Therefore the network was designed end-to-end, with full redundancy and backup incorporated. In addition, network flexibility was key to the client so we were able to provide a network to operate within a multi-vendor environment. Enabling full integration and operability to be maintained.
Result
Key to the success of this project was the ability to deliver a fully protected microwave radio network with path diversity, over a challenging geographical landscape in the given deployment timescales and on budget. We were able to fully deploy the network in a matter of months, rather than years for a full fibre deployment.
Product/service used
- RF desktop planning
- Equipment purchasing
- Equipment staging
- Warehouse, logistics and transportation services
- Project management & project engineering services
- Field engineering services
- 24x7x365 network operations centre monitoring
- 24x7x365 customer support and call out services