ntl:Telewest Business and JANET® join forces to facilitate e-learning and research across West Midlands

• £4.5 million network will deliver 21st Century learning facilities to 3.4 million staff and students
• Innovative technologies to enhance the educational experience in the region

5/3/09: ntl:Telewest Business, the supplier of communications services to the public and private sectors, has today announced that it will provide a £4.5 million high speed data network across the West Midlands. The new network will deliver JANET®, the UK's education and research network, to the region’s eight higher education institutes, 45 further education colleges, 2,500 primary and secondary schools and the research community. More than 3.4 million staff, students and researchers will use the new network.

One of the 17 regional networks that connect and deliver JANET® services to schools, colleges and universities, the West Midlands Regional Network has replaced the Midlands Metropolitan Area Network (MidMAN) across the area. The new high speed network will facilitate collaboration and fast and effective communication between the connected academic institutions, such as Aston University, Coventry University and the University of Warwick, as well as enabling access to other universities and the wider internet through JANET®.

For staff and students, the resilient regional network infrastructure will support high bandwidth applications and innovative e-learning facilities such as virtual learning environments, video conferencing and lecture streaming to remote sites. Access to the JANET® high capacity backbone will also enable researchers to connect to high performance national and international computing facilities and large data storage resources.

Tim Marshall, Chief Executive of JANET(UK) ®, said: 'We are delighted to be working with ntl:Telewest Business following their successful response to our tender for the West Midlands Regional Network. I am confident that together we will deliver an exemplary service to our customers across the West Midlands; enabling them to extend further the expectations of education and research in the region.'

The deployment of the 10Gbit/s core network and 10Mbit/s – 1Gbit/s connections to schools, colleges and universities further demonstrates ntl:Telewest Business’ strengths in the education sector as it follows the network upgrades for the East Midlands Metropolitan Area Network (EMMAN Ltd) and the extension of the Aurora infrastructure.

John Cunningham, Director of Business Markets, ntl:Telewest Business, said: “The West Midlands Regional Network will provide schools and universities across the region with the high-speed and resilient infrastructure required to support the latest e-learning and research tools. As new communications tools and multimedia applications become increasingly prevalent in education, we need to ensure that we are using the available technologies to engage students and enhance research collaboration. With the new network, the area’s academic community will also benefit from having national and international educational resources at its fingertips.”

The West Midlands Regional Network is also used by 13 of the region’s local authorities for internet access, transferring data and facilitating shared services capabilities.