City of York Council has commissioned a fibre network to support public services and businesses around the city.
Under a £13.7m eight-year contract, with the option to extend for a further two years, it will obtain a network built by H2O Networks and a managed service from Pinacl Solutions.
This will join up the council's sites, which include 67 schools, 14 libraries, accommodation, council offices and sports facilities, with bandwidth of up to 10Gbps. It is aimed at enabling the delivery of core council applications, IP telephony, video conferencing, CCTV and traffic management services.
Pinacl said it exceeds Becta guidelines for school connectivity and will support the education of about 24,000 pupils.
Roy Grant, head of IT at York, said: "The widespread adoption of the services has not been possible due to bandwidth limitations and costs, but with the new dark fibre network those restrictions are removed and new advanced boundaries can be considered.
"Not only will we be able to link up existing council buildings and facilities, including our new headquarters which will available for occupation in 2012, but the city-wide network will give us the potential to attract new businesses to York offering them low cost connectivity to the network.
Pinacl will provide an on-site team to support the network, which is scheduled to be completed by September 2010.
