British Transport Police is completing a major network
renewal as part of its overarching IT infrastructure overhaul. The
police force is preparing to switch on a converged IP network that
can carry roughly four times the traffic at the same cost as
before.
The main achievement was to replace its ageing
metropolitan and local area networks, in anticipation of a move to
new headquarters in Camden in November. In their place the force
has rolled out a converged voice and data network from Global
Crossing.
From October, British Transport Police will migrate its wide area
network off fixed 64-bit ISDN lines onto Global Crossing's
broadband DSL network.
It will also replace its 2mbps metropolitan leased lines with
Global Crossing's faster Metro Ethernet Access service, which uses
the firm's 25 city rings and the facilities of its 50 partners.
British Transport Police will use Fast (10/100Mbit) and Gigabit
Ethernet for its local area networking connections.
One challenge in designing the network was to incorporate the
police force's two major "enhanced communications lines" that go to
two different telephone exchanges from its seven main London
offices. "We cannot afford to lose communications. It is an
expensive thing to do but we do not have a choice," said Andrew
Watson, head of technology at British Transport Police.
"The project to replace leased lines countrywide is due for
completion in November. I cannot think of another organisation that
is doing what we are doing. We had to undertake the commercial and
technical negotiations within the same financial year. We have a
professional procurement department that has aided us."
Watson said he is already seeing cost savings from the work that
has been completed. "We are seeing more savings on our telecoms
costs, and getting two to four times the bandwidth for the same
costs," he said.