15 April 2015

Blackpool hybrid network With attractions such as the Pleasure Beach and its iconic tower, Blackpool receives around 10 million visitors each year. And while it may have the image of a ‘traditional’ seaside town, its council’s IT network is far from conventional.

The hybrid network features a mixture of existing as well as new infrastructure, using the latest hardware and software. While that may sound simple in theory, it was difficult to achieve in practice. In Blackpool’s instance, necessity was very much the mother of innovation. While its old network was no longer adequate, ripping everything out and starting entirely anew would have been too expensive.

In 2012, while the council was consolidating its headquarters, main network hub locations and data centres, its revenues were falling, and demand for its online services, such as cloud-based education applications, were increasing. It considered the option of a traditional leased line approach, but decided against it, choosing instead to consider a solution that used a range of technologies.

The end result was an Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) tender which was won by Lancaster-based firm The Network People (TNP).

As part the £3.2 million, five-year managed services deal, TNP has, designed and built the council’s WAN. It say this will help Blackpool take advantage of a range of technologies to make significant savings over the length of the contract, and connect more than 100 schools, libraries, business incubator sites and public buildings.

The technologies TNP deployed for Blackpool include: LLU (local loop unbundling); carrier class microwave radio systems using point-to-multipoint 60GHz and 80GHz frequencies as well as licensed bands; and fibre-optic cabling.

The council owns all the infrastructure which adheres to the PSN structure, and it is providing resilient, secure connectivity to the town as well as surrounding areas.

“The tender was won as a framework for six other councils in the Lancashire area,” explains TNP founder and director Chris Wade. “Subsequently, we are now installing up to 100-plus corporate sites in the Blackburn-with-Darwen Council area under a similar arrangement where the local authority is custodian of a network operated by TNP.”

Wade adds that Blackpool Council has since extended its network to incorporate a data centre at its core, a new Cisco Unified Communications Manager, a guest and corporate Wi-Fi solution with support for BYOD, and WAN connectivity into the local NHS data centre.