Abbey's network infrastructure is based on an IP virtual
private network supplied by BT Transform under a £125m, five-year
contract originally signed in February 2003.
Mark Main, senior analyst, at Ovum, said IP VPNs are a popular and
cost-effective way for businesses to link offices around the
country via a public carrier's network. "It is a flexible
alternative to leased lines," he said. "From a resources
perspective, businesses share a common network, but each company
sees a private network."
The IP VPN operator can provide a guaranteed quality of service,
which allows users to run bandwidth-critical applications such as
IP telephony.
Abbey National's IP VPN replaces a mixed network comprising ISDN,
ADSL and various ISPs. The internal telephone network is also being
replaced by IP telephony running between branches over the VPN.
By the end of October, 9,500 Cisco IP telephony handsets will be
rolled out across all branches in the UK.
BT Transform provided the networking services across 900 locations
and modernised the local area networks.
The legacy Token Ring Lan, based on Category 3 cabling, is being
replaced by switched Ethernet and Category 5 cabling to cope with
higher voice and data throughput. The branch network is also being
upgraded from a 64kbps link to 512kbps.