Media centre
18 March 2004
Kingston wins £4.5m contract to supply network for education in Yorkshire & Humberside
An agreement signed today heralds high-tech collaboration across the region that will benefit students, teachers and researchers, keeping Yorkshire and Humberside at the forefront of developments in this sector. Universities, colleges and other educational institutions/organisations throughout the Yorkshire and Humberside region will benefit from a 10-fold increase in network capacity this summer, thanks to a multimillion pound expansion programme overseen by YHMAN Ltd - a joint venture company of the region’s universities.
The £4.5M state-of-the-art fibre-optic cable network will be supplied by Kingston Communications and establishes a 10-12 year strategic partnership between the two companies. It will enable a high-profile expansion of Information Learning Technology across the educational curriculum, including strategies for widening participation, life-long learning, and contributing to the development of the e-region community. The network is connected to the UK education network SuperJANET for national and international Internet services. It will also increase the opportunities for regional research particularly in respect of e-Science.
A customer of Kingston Communications for over two years, YHMAN Ltd is responsible for procurement and operation of the Yorkshire and Humberside Metropolitan Area Network that currently serves the universities, higher and further education colleges and other education and associated establishments in the region. A major £1M grant from the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC) has made a significant contribution to the cost of the new network.
The need for higher bandwidth is due to:
- increased use and sophistication of on-line learning and teaching technology;
- increased use and quality of multi-media;
- planned increases in the number of on-line learners;
- greater use of real-time services, such as video;
- the spread of web services, peer-to-peer networks and other novel applications;
- faster local area networks and the take up of broadband;
- cabling of student residencies and provision of wireless ‘hot-spots’;
- vastly increased volumes of data from automated experiments and observations, examples include the dark matter experiment at Boulby, North Yorkshire, the proposed Yorkshire European Spallation Source and other worldwide experiments such as the CERN large hadron collider.
The advanced network provides multi-gigabit Ethernet running over private leased fibre driven with dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) technology to all sites.
The universities of Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan, Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam and York (all universities in the region) are served directly, being directly connected to the core, with the wider education and associated establishment community connected through access links operating at up to 100 megabits per second.
The network is configured in multiple cable rings in physically diverse cable routes to ensure high availability. True metro-LAN technology is used, based on resilient Cisco switches and Adva optical drivers. The new network provides for scalable bandwidth with core circuits running at 2Gbps initially with planned provisions to 8Gbps and, potentially, 64Gbps and beyond in the longer term.
Dr Richard Heseltine, Chair of YHMAN Ltd, said "The new YHMAN network gives the universities of Yorkshire and Humberside an exceptional technological platform on which to develop their learning, research and enterprise activities, and deepens the connection between Higher, Further and wider Education in the region. The offer from Kingston provides great value for money, and we have been consistently impressed by the company’s professionalism and expertise. The partnership between Kingston and YHMAN is very much one for the long-term."
Tony Cox, Director, Public Sector at Kingston, added: "We are delighted to have satisfied the demanding requirements of YHMAN through the innovative use of Kingston’s existing intellectual and physical assets. This consolidates and extends our existing long term relationship while enhancing the return on investment for both parties."
The development of the YHMAN follows further investment in the region such as:
- The £51m Government/Wellcome Trust investment to establish the National Science Learning Centre at York University and Regional Centre at Sheffield Hallam University. The NSLC will lead the development of an innovative professional development programme for science teachers that will inspire their teaching and equip them to communicate the dynamic nature of pioneering scientific research and development to their students.
- The £2.8 million, with £400,000 backing from the regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, development of the White Rose Grid that provides massive computational power in a novel, cost-effective computing environment to enable more effective sharing resources, knowledge and experiences in order to develop a wide portfolio of internationally important new projects. The Grid has already been recognised as a source of computational excellence and acknowledged for its contribution to the development of business and commerce within the UK by being named as a Centre for Excellence for e-Science in the UK.
- And Yorkshire’s bid to host the £1 billion European Spallation Source to provide new and crucial insights into the behaviour of atoms within materials for thousands of physicists, chemists, biologists, material scientists and engineers from across Europe and beyond. The knowledge gained will directly impact the development and realisation of the many novel structural and functional materials demanded by 21st century technology. There are currently three bids to host the ESS: the UK bid (Yorkshire), one from Germany and another from Scandinavia.
About the YHMAN Limited
YHMAN Limited (a joint venture company of the universities in Yorkshire and Humberside) has provided Internet services since 1998 and is one of nineteen high performance multi-service regional telecommunications networks connecting educational, research and public sector organisations within specific regions throughout the UK.
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
For further information please contact:
Tracey Williams
TWPR
01225 723237
E: tracey.williams@twpr.co.uk
Judith Parsons
Kingston Communications
01924 882870
E: judith.parsons@kcom.com
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