Thus assured by £5m Standard Life deal

Thus has signed a £5m deal with Standard Life to supply and manage the life assurance firm's voice and data network.

It will link the 10 sites comprising Standard Life's Edinburgh head office with high speed ISDN lines handling inbound and outbound traffic to and from the rest of the UK and worldwide. Thus will also provide leased lines for inter-office traffic and a fibre optic metropolitan area network (MAN) for traffic between Standard Life sites and its data centres.

Thus will also manage 0845 - local rate numbers - for Standard Life. The deal builds upon an existing 10 year agreement between Standard Life and the Scottish telco.

Mike Mann, network services manager at Standard Life, said revisions to the management of phone numbers and traffic is essential "as a significant amount of our business is conducted via the telephone".

"Other key drivers behind upgrading our telephone facilities in Edinburgh were to significantly reduce costs whilst improving network availability," added Mann.