Cambridgeshire prepare to upgrade their communications network

Arqiva has announced that it has secured a multi-million pound deal to provide Cambridgeshire Constabulary with a new Wide Area Network (WAN) to connect 19 premises across the force.

The deal, worth up to £2.6m over five years, will see Arqiva upgrade most of the force’s voice and data communications via a network of combined fibre and microwave technologies, which will provide up to 30 times the capacity and data transmission speeds available from the current network.

The upgrades to Cambridgeshire’s systems is the latest development in a long-standing relationship between Arqiva and the force, which has seen Arqiva providing the fully managed microwave network currently in use, as well as providing managed services for the Airwave communications systems. In order to keep costs to a minimum, whilst providing the increased speeds and capacity required, Arqiva will develop the new combined network on the existing infrastructure of the microwave system it has supplied since 1998. The new system is expected to increase the core data capacity from 34 Mbit/sec to one Gbit/sec, resulting in a network that will meet all the force’s current and anticipated bandwidth requirements. This extra capacity allows them to increase the efficiency of their key data applications, thus helping to meet the challenges of modern policing.

Jon Lane, Head of Networks for Cambridgeshire Constabulary said: “We have long been assured of Arqiva’s experience in the telecoms market and its ability to offer a fully managed service as the providers of our present communications network.

“Quick and reliable communications are essential to our operations, and we favour a solution that doesn’t involve completely rebuilding our existing network and which keeps costs as low as possible – Arqiva’s solution delivers both of these key factors. With this new deal, we have every confidence in Arqiva’s ability to provide us with a far-reaching and effective solution to adapt to our changing communications needs.”

Peter Harris, Telecoms Product Manager at Arqiva added: “Our relationship with Cambridgeshire Constabulary has given us a detailed understanding of its needs, and combined with our experience in this area, the choice of a combined fibre and microwave network was the logical option. We envisage a successful extension of our partnership and the provision of a solution to meet the force’s current and future IT requirements.”