News
UK’s Neos Networks selects Alcatel-Lucent’s Ethernet over MPLS solution for advanced service delivery
February 2008 by Marc Jacob
Alcatel-Lucent announced that it has been awarded a multi-million Euro contract by Neos Networks, the telecommunications business owned by Scottish and Southern Energy plc, to upgrade its nationwide Ethernet network. Alcatel’s IP/MPLS-based solution offers Neos a highly reliable, service-rich, future-proof infrastructure that allows the service provider to introduce a range of new, converged services with increased speed, flexibility and cost-efficiency. Network deployment is being rolled out on a regional basis.
Neos networks launched the UK’s first national Ethernet service in 2001 and have subsequently continued to develop high speed and flexible Ethernet services with industry-leading provisioning times. The investment in the Alcatel-Lucent platform will allow Neos to stay at the forefront of the UK Ethernet market deploying new products such as VPLS Any-to-Any.
The Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router (SR) solution enables Neos to offer true Ethernet any-to-any, multi-site solutions as well as multiple classes of service on an on-demand and application-by-application basis. The platform allows Neos to scale their backbone and customer access up to 40Gb/s while still maintaining industry-leading service level guarantees. The Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) provides fully automated, on-demand profile changes amongst many different service tiers minimizing operational complexity and costs for the operator.
The deal also included extensive training for development and operations staff at NEOS and project engineering and maintenance support.
Adrian Pike, Managing Director of Neos Networks explained: “Our customers rely on us for high speed, dedicated connections with high availability, often across offices at multiple sites. By trusting us with their business-critical traffic, our customers look to us to provide flexible, cost-effective and totally reliable services. Alcatel-Lucent’s highly scalable service delivery architecture will allow us to combine our existing Ethernet service and all future service deployments onto a single high-speed MPLS core network. This single platform will enable us to drive down the operational costs associated with bringing new solutions, such as Any-to-Any to market in addition to the ability to introduce new business”
The Neos platform upgrade program will significantly enhance its national Ethernet network reach and will cater to the most challenging requirements from the UK business community,” said Fred Rose, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s business in Europe, Africa and Asia. “The solution contains the carrier-class and service-rich features necessary to deliver the high-speed, high-bandwidth and highly available solutions that will exceed Neos’ customer demands.”
Over 190 service providers in more than 80 countries around the world have selected the Alcatel-Lucent IP portfolio as key elements of their IP transformation, including massive, multi-year projects at AT&T, BT and Telstra. During the third quarter of 2007, Alcatel-Lucent reinforced its #2 position in IP/MPLS edge garnering 18% of the market according to Ovum RHK.
About Neos Networks Ltd
Neos Networks is part of the Scottish and Southern Energy Group, a FTSE Top 40 company employing14,000+ staff with a turnover of £11.9 billion.Formed in 1997, Neos’ objective was to provide innovative, flexible and cost-effective communications solutions to its customers and this mirrors its ongoing philosophy. Neos is one of the most financially secure service providers in the UK, not to mention profitable.
Achieving substantial new business growth in 2007 while maintaining minimal customer churn. This has been achieved by investing in the network, putting customers first, delivering quality projects on time and on budget and ensuring an extremely high service level once installed.
Neos is a network operator with a product set focussed on the provision of L1 and L2 connectivity for other carriers, network integrators and B2B delivered over its extensive owned UK fibre network.
