Media centre

14 February 2002

Yorkshire Universities Turn to Kingston inbusiness for Upgrade of YHMAN

Kingston inbusiness, the national business services division of Kingston Communications has won a two year contract worth £668,600 to upgrade and provide additional resilience to the Yorkshire and Humberside Metropolitan Area Network (YHMAN), the communications network that links nine Yorkshire universities.

YHMAN is a high capacity network that links the campus networks of universities in Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Lincoln, Sheffield and York in order to support collaboration in learning, teaching and research. YHMAN also provides Internet connectivity for all the Further Education colleges in Yorkshire and Humberside, so this upgrade is crucial as these colleges make increasing use of the internet as an educational resource.

Kingston inbusiness will use its advanced national network, which was completed last year, to upgrade YHMAN by providing managed 155Mbit/s links between Leeds, York, Hull, Sheffield and Huddersfield. The upgrade will ensure that the YHMAN network has the capacity to cope with increasing quantities of data traffic as the universities use it to exchange knowledge and develop new methods of teaching using technology.

Kingston inbusiness is increasingly working with the public sector as the government aims to create “Broadband Britain”, with all government services available online and every citizen able to access the internet and email services by 2005. In recognition of its expertise in providing telecommunications solutions for the public sector, Kingston inbusiness was recently awarded Government Telecom Contract service provider status by OGC buying.solutions, the government agency that selects suitable suppliers for public organisations.

Dr Richard Heseltine, Director of Academic Services at the University of Hull and Chairman of the Board of YHMAN Ltd commented, “Since its launch in 1998, YHMAN has been a resounding success, making the region’s universities more efficient and more responsive to regional needs. With the ever increasing dependence on IT and electronic teaching methods, the additional capacity and resilience that Kingston inbusiness is adding will ensure that we have the infrastructure in place to handle increasingly large quantities of data.”

Andrew Tapley, Regional Director of Kingston inbusiness is delighted by the deal, “We already have close ties with many of the universities on an individual basis. These relationships coupled with our communications expertise and advanced resilient network infrastructure means that we will be able to add a great deal of value to YHMAN as it develops, ensuring that Yorkshire remains a seat of educational excellence in the future.”

YHMAN is connected to the national academic network, SuperJANET (Joint Academic NETwork).

For further information, please contact:
Richard Griffiths, National PR Manager, Kingston inbusiness
Tel: 01924 886011
Mobile: 07769 670 755
Fax: 01924 886100
e-mail: richard.griffiths@kcom.com

About KCOM Group PLC

The KCOM Group delivers communications services to a range of businesses and consumers, with an emphasis on exceptional service delivery.

Its Kcom business provides communications services for national multi-site enterprise and public sector organisations across the UK. As an independent provider of these services, supported by its BT Wholesale partnership, Kcom is able to offer advanced network capability and related added value services, coupled with a flexible approach to delivering its customers' requirements.

Its KC business provides a range of communications services to businesses and consumers in Hull and East Yorkshire. Eclipse Internet delivers a portfolio of internet based communications services. These are designed to help small businesses and home based workers to exploit the power of the internet to achieve business success.

For more information on the KCOM Group, please go to www.kcomplc.com