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Norfolk County Council strikes two deals with Capita

21/02/20

Mark Say Managing Editor

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Norfolk County Council has extended its commitment to working with Capita with a new contract to upgrade its fibre network and the extension of their existing deal for network and IT services.

The fibre contract, valued at £6 million, involves an upgrade for the country’s existing hybrid network to a local full fibre network (LFFN).

It is supported with funds from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s LFFN Challenge Fund, and will involve providing connections to 108 public sector buildings and 230 schools in Norfolk.

The network and IT services extension will run for four years and is valued at £7.5 million. It includes the provision of a managed wide area network and secure internet services.

Both deals will support the Better Broadband for Norfolk programme, which is aimed at delivering 95% coverage of superfast connectivity across the county by April of this year.

Good position

Councillor Tom Fitzpatrick, the council’s cabinet member for innovation, transformation and performance, said:” The full fibre network and IoT roll out will enhance and improve how our communities access our services. It will also place us in a very good position to extend digital services in the future.” 

In addition, Capita has supplied the council with more than 120 long range wide are network (LoRaWAN) gateways to support the deployment of internet of things (IoT) devices. It currently uses sensors to support operations such as road gritting and desk utilisation, and plans to use them for providing boat users on the Norfolk Broads with information.

In 2018 it made the LoRaWAN network available to innovators and businesses to test IoT applications.

Image by Graham Hardy / Norfolk County Hall, Martineau Lane, through Wikimedia

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