Scottish council boosts network

East Renfrewshire unitary council has awarded NTL: Telewest Business a £5m contract to supply a distributed Ethernet enterprise network.

The council previously used an SDH-based star architecture network supplied by NTL but the first elements of that contract began to run out in 2005. The present contract is due to last until 2012.

Although Renfrewshire is one of the smallest councils in the country, its staff are decentralised around 60 buildings, including the authority's schools. As East Renfrewshire Council e-government project manager Jim Love put it, staff are "scattered to the four winds", so a robust network architecture is essential for the council to continue to deliver services to the community.

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The authority covers 67 square miles south of Glasgow and supports a population of 89,000.

Love is rolling out IP across the whole network and one of the facilities he hopes to use the network for is to provide an IP CCTV alarm system to protect its building portfolio.

Use will also be extended out to the community through the authority's Citizen Connect service, which allows residents to pay for services and council tax online and through interactive voice response systems.