Cambridge-based Dante, on behalf of the Consortium of European Research networks, has signed a multi-year, multi-million Euro deal with Colt Telecom Group, creating one of the world's most powerful research networks purchasing from Colt 10 and 2.5 Gigabit wavelength services which will be incorporated in a new super fast backbone network interconnecting 32 countries across Europe.
This new network will connect the greatest number of researchers in the world.
Dante operates an extensive and high-powered Research Internet that connects university research networks in 25 countries, providing a platform to allow researchers of all disciplines to share information, run high-capacity programs across multiple sites and co-operate on joint research in a wide range of disciplines including telecommunications.
The new network, called Geant, will facilitate innovative approaches to research in topics such as weather forecasting, high-energy physics and telecommunications networking itself. It will enable researchers geographically distributed across Europe to co-operate with one another as if they were in the same laboratory.
This is a direct result of the significant increase in the power and transmission capacity of the network.
Dai Davies, Dante General Manager tated "this new infrastructure will allow us to offer speed of transmission previously impossible on the old network. As well as increasing the efficiency of our research partners and offering significant savings in communication costs, Geant will open up a host of new possibilities for co-operation and sharing. Areas such as remote learning and computational networks require the sort of bandwidth capacity that this new network will be able to provide. This is a very significant contract for Dante and we are pleased that the combination of the Colt robust & proven network, geographic coverage and cost-effective solutions have enabled them to play a key role in delivering what must be the most powerful 10 Gigabit research network in the world, with the broadest geographic coverage."
Peter Manning, Colt President and Ceo adds "10 Gigabit services - 160,000 times more powerful than a standard domestic phone line – are at the leading edge of technology, and it is a testament to our core company values of quality and reliability that Dante have selected Colt to provide them with a next generation network.
This significant contract win demonstrates what can be achieved when you own and operate your own end to end network across Europe."