Wales seeks broadband deal

Open for tenders

The Welsh Assembly Government has launched a procurement for public sector broadband connections.

It has published an OJEU notice inviting tenders to supply high capacity links to sites across the country as part of a Public Sector Broadband Network for Wales.

The deal, which could be worth up to £150m, is part of the Public Sector Broadband Aggregation Programme, which is aggregating demand for broadband connections. It will make use of the physical broadband network already in place in Wales, and provide connections for a range of public service organisations.

A spokesperson for the Assembly Government told GC News: "The Public Sector Broadband Aggregation (PSBA) programme is about economies, efficiencies and interoperability.

"Currently, individual sectors procure their own connectivity. The objective of the PSBA project is to aggregate the demand for connectivity to procure a single high bandwidth solution.

"By consolidating the procurement process, PSBA will provide significant economies of scale and allow the various sectors to purchase capacity from a single, national network.

"Further benefits will also be seen, as PSBA will allow increased interoperability between public sector networks that will support improved delivery of public services."

The spokesperson said the current capacity of the broadband infrastructure is enough to meet existing requirements, but that the new connections would help the government improve coordination across the public sector under its Making Connections programme.

Network implementation is scheduled to follow the award of the contract next year.

This article was originally published at Kablenet.

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