Salford Uni bets 20 years on NTL voice and data

The University of Salford has turned to NTL Business for IP telephony and wide area network expertise - over a 20-year period.

The contract is worth £10m to the telco and covers voice and data across 30 buildings, delivering speeds of 1Gbps and higher. There is also scope for NTL to work with Salford on new systems and projects, some of which will be of benefit to the wider community, just outside Manchester.

But much attention is likely to focus on the two decades over which the relationship is planned to last.

Dave Mailer, technical consultant at the University of Salford, said: "The main reason was to secure the dark fibre element. The active [telecoms] equipment will obviously be renewed over the contract period."

While the university, which has around 18,000 students and 2,000 staff across several campuses, has a mix of telecoms equipment at the moment it is standardising on Cisco Avvid IP telephony kit over the next four years.

Linda Doyle, head of communications and training at the University of Salford's information services division, said the organisation will use "video clip nuggets" to teach staff how to use the new equipment, delivered over their PCs but eventually possibly over the IP phones too.

NTL, better known as a cable TV and telephony provider in the UK, bills itself as the "largest alternative network in the UK". Details of other telcos involved in the tender, which mostly ran last year, were not disclosed.

Other NTL Business customers include Heathrow Terminal 5, Next and a number of local authorities.