Portsmouth council gets DSL

NEWS Portsmouth City Council has awarded a contract to systems integrator Mase to supply the high-speed DSL network it needs to conform to the e-government requirements. The network will connect over 140 schools and local offices throughout the area and replaces an existing low bandwidth network that can no longer fill the authority's bandwidth requirements Through the network, schools will get high-speed internet access and offices will be able to link customer service desks to a central customer relationship management and data warehouse system. In a prepared statement, Dr Robert France, head of IT at Portsmouth City Council, said: "The Mase system will integrate our existing system with contemporary converged technologies, to provide an innovative cost-effective high capacity network, which will meet our expanding requirements." Raj Bhandari, MD of Mase, explained that the council had 128k connectivity before, but SDSL gives it a throughput of 2.3Mbps. Bhandari claimed this is more than the Council needs at the moment. He said: "The slowest line speed is 512k but that's twice what they had before. The council may have to upgrade though to be able to do all they want to for the e-government directive, but by then they'll have other options. At the moment there's a lot of opposition to wireless broadband, especially in the schools because of the perceived health risk. By the time Portsmouth needs more bandwidth, people should be better informed."