JANET News

Over the last year, we have been busily laying plans for the next generation of our Janet infrastructure, Janet6. With a huge growth in research data, remote working and the increase in technology for teaching and learning, updating the Janet network infrastructure to Janet6 is essential to ensure we take advantage of significant technological developments. Janet6 will continue to provide a flexible, sustainable and resilient network infrastructure to support research and education organisations in providing all these different activities.

We are now pleased to announce, that following approval by the Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, the Call for Final Tender (CFT) for the procurement of the fibre infrastructure for Janet6 has just been issued. The CFT has been issued to: Geo (in consortium with ESBT), SSET and Verizon. We’ve also been working on the procurement of the transmission equipment in parallel. In January we shortlisted 6 bidders: Alcatel Lucent; Ciena; Fujitsu; Huawei; Nokia Siemens Networks; and Virgin Media. We aim to have the Janet6 fibre and transmission contracts in place in September 2012.

A fuller discussion on the Janet6 project will be published in the next edition of Janet news. This will include an update on the outcome of the fibre infrastructure procurement and the Call for Final Tender for the transmission equipment.

To find out more about Janet6, please visit the project page.

Following a recent market investigation, Janet has announced that seven suppliers have been short-listed to proceed to the next stage of procurement – this is to provide the fibre infrastructure for the next generation of the Janet network.

The suppliers selected from the market investigation are:

• British Telecommunications
• C&W Worldwide
• Geo Networks
• Level 3 Communications
• SSE Telecoms
• Verizon
• Virgin Media Business

The suppliers were drawn from a number of organisations who applied through a first stage OJEU procurement. Over the next few months, detailed discussions will take place so that shortlisted suppliers are fully aware of the requirements and standards of service expected by Janet, on behalf of the UK research and education community. These discussions will lead to the production of a final call for tender against which the suppliers will respond.

The market investigation was conducted as part of a programme to upgrade the Janet network, ensuring it continues to provide the capacity and capabilities required by schools, colleges, universities and research organisations across the UK. This followed an extensive consultation and requirements gathering exercise across all areas of the research and education community.

A further procurement for the optical equipment required to build network services over the fibre infrastructure has also been initiated. Selection of a shortlist of suppliers to take through to the dialogue phase will take place in January 2012.

To follow the progress of this project, and to find out more about the procurement, please visit the Janet6 webpages:  www.ja.net/janet6

The first phase of research for the next generation of the Janet backbone is now underway.  A preliminary market investigation has begun to explore how suppliers respond to the requirements for the new Janet backbone network – the project to do this is called Janet6. Read the full story