Press Release
MLL Telecom, a leading provider of secure managed network services for the UK public sector, today announced that it has been chosen by Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) as the sole supplier for a regional framework for the provision of Wide Area Network (WAN) services enabling site-to-site and site-to-internet/cloud connectivity. The Framework has a value of £250m which is accessible to other public sector bodies via direct award.
NCC has made an immediate call-off contract for its own WAN network upgrade. The deployment of this regional core network will also include a Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) pilot as the Council sets its sights on improved network performance and lower latency.
The network upgrade—scheduled for completion in 2020—will include HSCN and PSN connections with the option to add additional services such as SIP trunks and VoIP. The new regional core network will replace the Council’s legacy incumbent network and will be made available to more than 200 sites in the area including, but not limited to, corporate sites, arms-length organisations and healthcare partners. MLL Telecom will work closely with Nottingham County Council to provide added network flexibility and scalability to the council’s connectivity services.
As part of the upgrade, MLL Telecom will carry out an SD-WAN pilot in the summer of 2020, in advance of the full WAN deployment. The pilot will be run across a select number of council sites to assess the technology’s performance against a traditional WAN, with the ultimate goal of meeting the Council’s latency requirement of less than 20 milliseconds.
To ensure the successful deployment of the project, MLL will align closely with long term strategic partner SSE Enterprise Telecoms. The UK connectivity provider, which operates a 12,000km nationwide network, is in the process of significantly expanding its reach and will support MLL with the unbundling of several BT exchanges. This will enable access to local 10Mbps – 10Gbps Ethernet services on 100Gbps backhaul, supporting Nottingham County Council overcome any bandwidth or latency issues, and achieve its high-capacity ambitions.
Commenting on the appointment, Nigel Stevenson Service Director Finance, Infrastructure & Improvement at Nottinghamshire County Council said: “Access to reliable and resilient connectivity is of vital importance to Nottinghamshire’s public sector organisations. Technology plays an important role in improving operational efficiencies, but only if we have the right underlying connectivity to support it. We chose MLL Telecom based on its clear capability to improve network connectivity in the area and meet our latency requirement while delivering an SD-WAN trial that we are keen to explore.”
Gail Harvey, Business Development Director, Public Sector, MLL Telecom, commented: “We are thrilled to have been awarded the contract to deploy a regional core network for Nottingham County Council. The new network will be key to futureproofing the Council’s connectivity and will be able to support more, varied services. We’re excited to be bringing our expertise and experience to the project, and are also looking forward to the results of the SD-WAN pilot.”
Simon Willmott, Sector Director for Service Providers at SSE Enterprise Telecoms said: “Partnerships with like-minded telcos like MLL are critical in bringing high-capacity connectivity services to the UK’s public sector, and businesses beyond. Our expertise in unbundling BT Exchanges will enable MLL access to the Ethernet and FTTC connectivity services that Nottingham County Council requires. Our long-term strategic partnership with MLL is based on a collaborative model for rolling out connectivity services and we look forward to more successful partnerships in future.”
MLL Telecom was awarded the four-year framework agreement following a competitive bidding process.
