Metronet has taken over Trafford Housing Trust’s networking provision after the failure of the housing provider’s incumbent fibre providers to transfer connectivity to its new offices, despite months of planning, leaving it without any internet or telephony services.
Bob Dodds, business support manager, Trafford Housing Trust, said, “I remembered seeing a story in which Metronet had provided temporary wireless connectivity provision for a Christmas call centre with a very fast turn-around. With the flexibility that it offered, Metronet seemed to be the only option to get us back up and running. When I made the call, Metronet pulled out all the stops and delivered a managed 100Mbps point-to-point connection within 24 hours.
“Our use of wireless technology started as a last resort for an urgent requirement but once we had tested the quality of service, we were very happy with it. The product proved its worth so much that we cancelled our fibre contracts.”
THT then decided to deploy a full MPLS network across its estate to improve resilience and remove its dependence on any individual site. The first step, linking four primary offices using high bandwidth connections, was followed by connecting THT’s sheltered schemes , with 25 schemes now connected using 2Mbps uncontended wireless leased lines. Furthermore, now that it is connected to several carrier-neutral datacentres, THT has been able to co-locate servers in a secure, dedicated quarter-rack space for hosting central services in the cloud.
Dodds said, “These sheltered schemes, with just two or three staff, were previously connected using broadband but this just wasn’t working as the connection was unreliable. Many of the sites were too far from the exchange and we couldn’t run the telephony over the connections. We had to do something to improve reliability and Metronet was able to help us with this.”
In addition to improved reliability and performance, THT has reduced the cost of its infrastructure and telephony, with new sites being brought online periodically as budget becomes available. THT can also use the Metronet network as a platform for VoIP and run SIP trunks of over 15,000 minutes of connectivity per month, equating to over 9000 calls, and an estimated 50 per cent saving in telephony costs.
