More network bandwidth for South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire Police has teamed up with ntl:Telewest Business to improve communications at a regional and national level. The move will ensure that all officers and support staff have high-speed access to networked applications.

There are 72 sites across the force that have been connected with ntl:Telewest Business’ Evolved Ethernet, achieving a significant upgrade to bandwidth available to individual sites from 2Mbps to 10 Mbps circuits. The new network will support voice, data and video traffic. Through a high speed network, South Yorkshire has the capability to deploy IPCCTV, videoconferencing and VoIP in the future.

“South Yorkshire Police is committed to implementing new initiatives that promote community safety at a local, regional and national level, and a high speed communications infrastructure underpins a lot of these,” said Kevin Battersby, network manager, South Yorkshire Police. “As the general requirement for data in police forces increases and the numbers of systems grow, the demand for high availability bandwidth is critical. The network will give us the most cost-effective way of achieving this when compared to other offerings on the market.”

Christopher Small, Director for Public Sector, ntl:Telewest Business also commented: “With the Government’s drive for police forces across the UK to embrace E-Policing and make better use of networked police information portals, a high-speed network becomes critical. South Yorkshire Police is taking the lead in ensuring that it has future-proofed its network today to make the most of advances in policing tomorrow.”