BT Business scoops multi-million pound MediaCityUK ICT contract

BT has won a multi-million pound contract to provide MediaCityUK infrastructure on Salford Quays site

BT Business providing Cisco-based 10Gbit/s connections for MediaCityUK

BT Retail arm BT Business, has won a multi-million pound, five-year contract to provide the communications network for the MediaCityUK development at Manchester's Salford Quays.

Peel Media, a division of MediaCity developers and owners The Peel Group, awarded the contract to the organisation.

Peel Group chairman Bryan Gray said of the project: "The communications infrastructure [to be delivered by BT Business] will make MediaCityUK one of the most digitally advanced communities in the world."

BT has promised to complete the project, which will see the installation of an optical fibre infrastructure able to deliver 10Gbit/s of bandwidth, by 2011. Beneficiaries of the network will include the BBC and The University of Salford.

BT Business will work with network giant Cisco on the design, implementation and managment of the private network, which will comprise 20 million metres of optical fibre capable of handling voice, data, standard and high definition video. It will also be able to backhaul wireless connections.

Work on the project will begin later this year, with Cisco providing the backbone network's switching hardware. The backbone will connect each of the development's major buildings.

Embarrassingly for Peel Media, its operations director David Carr resigned early in August because he was 'missing London'.