Dundee City Council
Aerelink Connect Wireless WAN In Dundee City
Aerelink, the country's leading wireless system integrator have been assisting Dundee City Council rolling out point to point and point to multipoint licensed and light licensed wireless technology throughout the city. Dundee City Council is a local government authority responsible for providing various services to the citizens and businesses of Scotland's fourth largest city. Network users range from nursery school children to senior council officials.
The Client
Dundee, Scotland's fourth largest city is home to around 142,000 residents and covers an area of some 26 square miles. It is known as the City of Discovery, being the place that the RRS Discovery ship was built. This was the ship famously commanded by Captain Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic). Dundee is also a University City and is home to both Dundee and Abertay Universities.
Dundee City Council is responsible for providing services such as education, housing, transportation, cleansing, social work, recreation and many other services to both residents of Dundee and visitors alike.
There is currently a huge investment underway at a cost of over £270m to reinvigorate the waterfront area in a bid to reconnect the city with the River Tay.
The Requirement
Dundee City Council had a requirement to meet guidelines laid down by central government to provide an ever increasing amount of bandwidth to schools - normally around 4mbps or above to primary schools and 10mbps or above for secondary schools. Consideration by the council was also being given to other council departments and services that required more bandwidth.
"The solution provided by Aerelink provided us with the twin benefits of greatly increasing our bandwidth at the same time as more than halving our ongoing revenue costs. The project was managed very professionally by Aerelink's dedicated team"
Ged Bell – Head of IT at Dundee City Council
The Solution
The solution began in 2005 when Dundee City Council decided to conduct a trial utilising wireless point to point 'light licensed' technology to connect five of its secondary schools. The project was deemed successful given that each school enjoyed around 15mbps of available bandwidth.
The authority then decided to roll out the technology to primary schools and the remaining secondary schools and, utilising similar equipment but in point to multipoint format, some 34 primary and five secondary schools were connected with each receiving up to 6mbps for primary and around 15mbps for secondary.
Since 2005 the network has continued to grow and the council has connected further services to the wireless network including social work, housing, sport and recreation, cleansing, preschool and more. Aerelink are about to embark on further expansion of the network by redeploying many of the original systems to distribute aggregation sites which will in turn continue to future proof the council's investment.
The Benefits
By utilising technology that requires minimal licensing, the only ongoing or revenue costs are those associated with support and maintenance.
The authority owns all of the equipment, which means that any end site moves or requirements for temporary suspension of service can be effected with time and cost, compared with lesser costs than those associated with cessation of service and installation of new service by traditional leased line supply.
Other benefits to the Council include:
- Equipment deployed is upgradeable via software to enable faster speeds.
- Equipment speeds can be controlled centrally therefore each site can be given the bandwidth it needs, enabling the network traffic to be controlled more efficiently.
- Ongoing revenue costs are more than halved.
