Glasgow picks BT to provide free public city centre WiFi
Glasgow has become the first Scottish city to award a wireless 'concession' after the council awarded a contract to BT to deliver free public wifi internet access in the city's streets and public spaces. The concession model means access to the wireless network comes through the lease of council-owned street furniture and property, with the council providing a license to allow a network operator to build a wireless network. This model, used by other major UK cities, means that the council does not have to make any investment, with the network being designed, built and operated by the private sector. The first phase of the Glasgow Urban Wireless programme will be delivered ahead of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, with between 50-80 wireless access points installed around busy areas and transport hubs around the city centre and parts of the East End district. There will be free 24-hour public access to the network for the first six months and after this period there will be free access for 30 minutes per day per handset. Access to some sites, including Glasgow City Council's website will remain free permanently. The next phase of Glasgow's wireless network will be rolled out towards early 2015, extending coverage more widely throughout the city. The overall contract is for eight years, with an option for the council to extend for another two.
Pictured: Glasgow rooftops - the East End by Thomas Nugent/Geograph.org.uk
BT: bt.com
iTrinegy supports critical application performance for NHS in Yorkshire
Application performance management (APM) specialist iTrinegy has helped ensure the performance of networked applications for local clinics in NHS West, South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit's catchment area, the company has said. The Commissioning Support Unit uses an extensive network that links more than 500 GP surgeries and clinics. It also provides connectivity to centrally stored national data through multiple secure networks. iTrinegy's AppQoS APM products allows organisations to identify, in real time, application response time information, the causes of poor application and network performance, as well as provide data for capacity planning, the firm says. "One of our practice managers contacted us regarding the apparent slowdown of the Hosted Clinical system. This slowdown was causing severe disruption within the practice and was having a direct impact on patient care", said Paul Simms, network support manager for the unit. Early checks indicated that all was well with the local switches and other networked devices, we needed to conduct a more thorough investigation to get to the cause of the problem", Simms said. "In a network of this size, there are many places where a fault might lie and the issue is how to identify poor application performance quickly." The NHS introduced AppQoS to monitor all client-server interactions for the affected network segments, and isolated the problem.
iTrinegy: www.itrinegy.com
Highways Agency chooses Yotta and Atkins in £600k asset management software deal
The Highways Agency has awarded a £600,000 contract to asset management consultancy Atkins and software specialist Yotta for the supply of Yotta's Horizons visualised asset management software and associated implementation services to inform the agency's road renewals programme. The software will allow the agency to carry out modelling to understand the current and future condition of the network based on its national pavement condition survey data. This model will then be used to predict where and when maintenance is likely to be needed. The project will have a duration period of 15 months.
The move marks the largest implementation of Horizons to date. Horizons will incorporate data gathered from a package of condition surveys. A significant proportion of the surveys is delivered by Yotta for the Highways Agency, which include Traffic Speed Condition Survey (TRACS), skid resistance and Deflectograph surveys as well as providing visualised asset coverage of England's trunk roads and motorways, covering approximately 18,650 lane miles (30,000 lane kilometres). The Decision Support Tool will help the Highways Agency to visualise its asset data and to run analyses to develop programmes of pavement renewals work.
Yotta: www.yotta.co.uk
Atkins: www.atkinsglobal.com
