BT has signed a multi-million pound contract to provide the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) with a fully managed Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network.
Specifically, BT will provide a Northern Ireland wide area network (WAN) across PSNI’s sites for the next five years.
This infrastructure will enable the PSNI’s mission-critical IT systems to be delivered across Northern Ireland at high speeds, providing the flexibility needed for modern policing to deliver services and information when and where needed.
The fully managed MPLS network has been designed to provide the PSNI’s business functions and operational team with a resilient, agile and flexible service to support its growth and deliver greater cost efficiencies, while enhancing the user experience.
“The PSNI requires solutions and services that give them peace of mind both in terms of delivering value as well as ensuring high quality of service,” said Peter Russell, head of public sector NI, BT.
“BT has worked closely with the PSNI to understand their business requirements so that we can offer them a solution that makes it easier and more cost effective to manage their communications in this fast-paced environment. By managing their network needs, we enable them to continue to focus squarely on policing.”
As well as providing enhanced security and improved performance levels for business-critical applications, the solution demonstrates BT’s ability to utilise its experience and capabilities to deliver to specific customer requirements. It also provides the PSNI with a platform on which to build further cost-effective and converged ICT services.
Fast and efficient IT links to all police stations
The new BT infrastructure will support a number of applications for the PSNI, including faster and efficient IT links to all police stations, giving the end user a better experience; it will support video conferencing solutions for internal meetings and provide the platform for cloud services so that the organisation can upscale and downscale bandwidth capability according to policing resource requirements and ultimately future proof the network for the growing IT demands of a modern police force .
“Efficient and cost-effective information systems are critical to the delivery of personal, professional, protective policing in Northern Ireland.
“BT has provided PSNI with a state-of-the-art wide area network solution that is fully scalable, flexible and resilient, while driving significant savings in our ICT services. PSNI fully expects that this contract with BT will deliver real, tangible benefits to frontline policing across Northern Ireland.”
