Energis wins £20m Thames Water/npower deal

Energis has won a £20m contract to provide voice and data services to UK utilities firms Thames Water and npower.

The three-year deal sees Energis take some business off BT and extend its foothold within German utility group RWE, which owns the two UK water and energy subsidiaries.

Energis already had a voice deal with npower and that has been extended to provide inbound and outbound voice, contact centre services and a new IP data network. Voice services for Thames Water are also included in the deal.

Hugo Mahoney, director of the infrastructure group at Energis, told silicon.com that cost reduction for the utility firms will be a key part of the deal.

"That was their single biggest criteria. But there are also very challenging deadlines in terms of speed of implementation," he said.

Mahoney said Energis had also been able to offer flexible contract terms, which include a commitment to benchmarking voice pricing on a quarterly basis.

"You have to offer something different," he said.

Jim Brown, IT director of shared services at RWE, said the "proactive commercial terms" of the deal, such as prices automatically reducing over time, will ensure value for money for RWE.

There is no voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) element to the deal but Energis said the new platform will enable RWE to easily add that functionality in at a later date should it need to.