Seven year strategic partnership doubles regional network footprint for SSE Enterprise Telecoms and gives Updata and Capita plc a new high availability, terabit capacity, national optical network for major outsourcing projects.
London, UK – 8th November 2016 – SSE Enterprise Telecoms – the UK’s leading provider of network infrastructure and data centre services and part of SSE Plc – today announce a ground-breaking, large scale, fixed line network sharing deal with Capita plc, Updata Infrastructure (Updata). The partnership allows each company to share the physical network assets of the other over the term of the seven year agreement.
For the 300+ IT & Telecoms service provider customers who use SSE Enterprise Telecoms’ (SSE) National Ethernet connectivity services, the deal will double their SSE service coverage from 250,000 business postcodes to over 500,000. For SSE, the deal shaves two years off its planned network expansion programme (“Project Edge”), reduces the cost of network expansion by at least 50%, adding 350 BT Exchanges to the SSE network footprint.
Updata and Capita will see each of their eight regional data centres connected directly and diversely to SSE’s national fibre optic network. This new capability will provide rapidly scalable, high availability, highly secure (CESG CAS-T) connectivity for their major Government and Corporate clients. The network is further engineered to deliver high performance, low latency synchronous replication, cloud service aggregation, network service orchestration and managed IT service delivery to their customer sites nationwide.
“It is extremely exciting to be announcing such a significant agreement to the I.T. & Telecoms market,” said Colin Sempill, Managing Director at SSE Enterprise Telecoms. “Network and infrastructure sharing models like this are commonplace in mobile telephony markets, but very unusual on this scale in fixed line telecoms. Doubling our service footprint in a relatively short period of time will make us one of the largest fixed line telecoms providers in the UK at a stroke. When combined with our reputation for reliability and service delivery performance, it will allow many thousands more businesses to benefit from our brand of high capacity, high availability services more cost effectively than ever before.”
“We’re very happy to announce our new commercial arrangement with SSE Enterprise Telecoms which will enable each party to address new market opportunities,” said Béatrice Butsana-Sita, Updata Managing Director. “It’s very important to us that our customers gain access to the kind of robust, scalable, high capacity networking fabric that SSE provides nationally. Connecting our assets together in a way that allows each to share the benefits of the other just made sense. Specifically, this will allow us to provide dedicated networking services to enterprise-sized clients who need connectivity in all corners of the UK. ”
About Updata Infrastructure
Updata Infrastructure is a leading managed networks and communications integrator, providing services to public and private sector clients. It provides a flexible approach to service integration, delivering innovative networks that help organisations to deliver increased business agility and service performance. For further information, please visit http://www.updata.net
About SSE Enterprise Telecoms
SSE Enterprise Telecoms provides class-leading connectivity and data centre services that deliver very high performance, cost efficiency and a competitive edge. The company owns and operates a 13,700km national telecoms network and an estate of 15 data centres that span the UK. With its extensive telecoms and data centre operational expertise it offers commercial security with unrivalled in-house engineering support. For further information, please visit: http://www.ssetelecoms.com/ or the SSE Enterprise Telecoms blog: http://www.ssetelecoms.com/blog/
Media contacts
Lindsey Challis / Charlotte Martin
Finn Partners, now incorporating Johnson King
020 3217 7060
SSEEnterpriseTelecoms@finnpartners.com