The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) has agreed on a four-year contract with MLL Telecom for the provision of a software defined wide area network (SD-WAN).
The company has begun the implementation with a scheduled completion date of December this year.
It will cover over 360 fire stations throughout Scotland, the larger ones of which, along with offices, will have full fibre connections. A hybrid approach involving fibre, 4G and digital subscriber lines will be used for the sites in rural areas.
The network will replace the legacy IPVPN WAN from Virgin Media, with a major requirement to reduce latency.
The new SD-WAN, one of the largest deployments in the UK, will be based on Fortinet technology with a next generation overlay to support a planned move to the cloud based architecture while maintaining high levels of security and control.
Need for resilience
Sandra Fox, head of ICT at SFRS, said: “MLL’s SD-WAN and engineering services will ensure SFRS can continue to depend on resilient high quality voice and data services as well as have a flexible and future proof solution that will underpin essential ICT services in line with our ongoing digital transformation.
MLL said there is an option to extend the contract.
SFRS is the world’s fourth largest fire and rescue service and delivers services from three strategically positioned hubs based in the north, west and east of the country.
Image from iStock, Train_Arrival
