National Grid Transco gets new £1.5m IP network

National Grid Transco (NGT) has implemented a £1.5m IP network for its new headquarters in Warwick following the merger of National Grid and Lattice.

As well as supporting 1,800 staff at the new site the IP network will provide virtual private network and wide area network connectivity to the existing Transco and National Grid networks.

The converged voice and data network from Omnetica will be used to communicate with these other UK sites as well as managing business and administrative processes.

A customised "stackable access" design will improve availability, reduce costs and enable faster recovery from any major incidents or outages, according to NGT.

At the Warwick headquarters employees will be able to hotdesk using a personalised log-in to access their individual desktop profile and telephone number, as well as a single point of access for the two companies' original networks.

Cliff Watson, infrastructure manager at NGT, said in a statement: "Internal support costs to monitor the IP network will be lower now because there is only one network to support. The converged network will also enable us to add services easily, such as video conferencing and voice recording, and at a lower cost than before."