Vodafone and C&WC team up for brewery deal

Cable & Wireless Communications (C&WC) and Vodafone have jointly won a £17m telecoms contract with Scottish & Newcastle. The brewery, pubs and leisure group said no single vendor could satisfy its various telecoms needs.

C&WC will handle fixed voice network needs, providing virtual private network, call management, voicemail and private branch exchange services. Vodafone - which already supplies Scottish & Newcastle's Scottish Courage arm - will serve 3,000 mobile users.

Ian Butterworth, Scottish & Newcastle's information services director, said: "Historically, we've used C&WC and BT [for fixed lines services], and for our mobile needs, Cellnet and Orange in addition to Vodafone. But after we acquired Courage in 1995, we had the classic problem of integrating it with the rest of the network."

He added, somewhat cryptically: "I don't like to use the 'o' word, but effectively, we've outsourced for flexibility and consistent functionality."

Commenting on the nature of the C&WC partnership, Duncan Black, C&WC director, corporate networking strategy, said: "We're in the business of providing solutions to our customers - that might even involve working with BT Cellnet, if that's what customers want."

He said Butterworth had insisted on a fully integrated solution that made technical sense, and lowered total cost of ownership.

This is the first time the two suppliers have won a contract in tandem, following the announcement three months ago that they would work together. At that time, Vodafone Corporate acquired C&WC's mobile service provider division, MC Mobile Services (previously Mercury Communications Mobile Services) for approximately £22m.

A Vodafone spokeswoman denied the deal is a snub for Energis and Racal Telecom, two of the mobile giant's other fixed-line partners. "We have a teaming agreement with Cable and Wireless, but we always make sure there's customer choice," she said.