Virgin signs multimillion pound C&W deal

Virgin Group has signed a three year, multimillion pound deal for Cable & Wireless (C&W) to deliver its communications services.

The telecoms company has been providing services to Virgin Group for more than seven years and currently provides hosting, security and contact centre services to different parts of the group.

Under the new contract, C&W will provide IP VPN to more than 130 sites in the UK, and will also provide managed security, wi-fi and application monitoring services.

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The services will be supplied to the Virgin Management, Virgin Trains, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Active companies within Virgin Group. The telco said the increased bandwidth will allow Virgin Atlantic's applications to work more effectively and for Virgin Trains to carry out an IT refresh.

Virgin Group CIO Gareth Lewis - one of the UK's top 50 CIOs - said Virgin Group is a complex business made up of a diverse number of different companies each with very specific requirements, and that "Cable & Wireless gets this".

Back in May, C&W unveiled a four-year agreement with Virgin Media to become its exclusive unbundled local loop network provider on a wholesale basis until 2011.