When the time came for the Wolverhampton City Council to put a new WAN in place, they put in the call to the Kenton Group and Actelis (News - Alert) to do the job. That was the contents of an announcement from the City of Wolverhampton, and the WAN that will be going in should be a very impressive one indeed.
The Kenton Group, the largest reseller of Actelis solutions in the U.K., used a combination of Actelis' ML2300 Aggregation Switches and Actelis' ML600 Ethernet Access Devices in a bid to not only use the copper plant that was already in place—many of Actelis' solutions are bonded-copper—but to also build a WAN that was flexible enough that it could be effectively built on in the future to add augmented capabilities as needed later on. It was originally built out into three BT (News - Alert) exchanges near the Council, and looks to continue adding new sites and exchanges. The Council actually looks to commission a new site every month, expanding the reach and capability of the WAN.
With the new WAN in hand, the Wolverhampton City Council can offer up a variety of new cloud-based services, which previously wasn't possible due to the costs associated with these programs. The new WAN, however, allows for much more cost-effective operations; lower operating costs means more services for the same amount of money. The converse to that, of course, is that people get their tax money back, but getting more services for no more money is a close second.
What really helped establish the network, though, was the relationship among the participants in this particular setup. Actelis and The Kenton Group, naturally, are on very good terms, and the relationship Actelis had with regulators in the U.K. was also significant help in getting the network established.
Improving networking ability is seldom a bad idea, and the Wolverhampton City Council's approach to network augmentation was a smart one indeed. Leaving room for future augmentations will be welcome to future members of the Council, while at the same time offering an ever-widening range of services for comparatively little investment. It's a smart idea, and one that should ultimately pay dividends for the Council and the people of Wolverhampton.
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Edited by Stefanie Mosca