Partnership will help connect region’s major Universities and Research Centres to new gigabit-capable fibre network
Network offers up to 100Gbps connections and ten-fold increases
LONDON, UK, 18th January 2022
Neos Networks, one of the UK’s leading business connectivity providers, today confirmed that it had been chosen by Jisc – suppliers of a digital network and supporting services for the UK’s higher education and research sector – to deliver a new Dark Fibre network spanning the North-West of the UK.
The new network will replace Jisc’s existing Janet North network which currently serves the region. It will provide gigabit capability to all the sites using the new network, with some seeing a ten-fold speed increase compared to their current offering and all achieving high-capacity speeds up to 100Gbps.
The contract was awarded following a competitive tendering process and is the latest instalment in Jisc’s ongoing overhaul and rationalisation of 15 regional networks connected into the organisation’s national backbone infrastructure.
As well as this latest North-West network contract, Neos has previously secured the contracts to upgrade and merge two Midlands networks into one new high-speed, high-capacity network, and also the contract covering Jisc’s South of England network. Supported by its aggressive programme to unbundle BT exchanges across the country, these agreements cement Neos’s position as Jisc’s primary network communications provider.
For Neos, Joanne Green, SD, Public Sector and Transport said: “Our relationship with Jisc goes back some 20 years and we are very pleased to take on this latest rebuild to significantly upgrade the Janet network in the North-West of England. Traffic on the network continues to grow exponentially, and the new gigabit fibre capability will ensure that Jisc stays ahead of the requirement in terms of speed, capacity and future growth for its member universities, colleges and research centres.”
The North-West is one of Jisc’s busiest regional centres serving more than 150 sites across the region including large universities in Manchester, Liverpool and Lancaster, numerous colleges, and major research establishments such as Jodrell Bank, and the Science & Technology Facilities Council laboratory at Daresbury, which is the central point for handling data arriving in the UK from the Hadron Collider in CERN’s Switzerland laboratory.
Jeremy Sharp, Chief Technology Officer at Jisc, said the new network was a crucial step forward within a changing communications environment. “The network will play a key role in the ongoing shift to the hybrid learning environment, as well as the greater dependence on cloud-based resources that is being experienced across the higher education sector.
“Importantly,” Sharp added, “as a publicly funded body, this agreement helps future proof our network, provides 5G backhaul capability for our members, and ensures we can deliver value for money not only to our member organisations, but also to those commercial customers that seek access to our services.”
Deployment of the network will begin immediately and Jisc expects it to begin offering services to member institutions as early as the third quarter of 2022.
In recent weeks Neos has announced the completion of its Project Edge programme, unbundling over 270 exchanges in key business areas across the UK and extending their national reach to 550 BT exchanges to further improve availability of its nationwide fibre network. In addition, it has also recently announced a major programme to offer direct access to its network in key metropolitan centres including Liverpool and Manchester in the North-West. Jisc is already confirmed as its first customer to benefit from the Liverpool access network.
Neos Networks was formerly a division of the national energy provider SSE. It has built a strong reputation for its nationwide, high-capacity fibre network, and has focused solely on serving businesses, public sector organisations, and critical national infrastructure providers with essential, reliable, connectivity for more than 20 years.
