BT Win Scotland Wide Area Network Contract Worth up to £350m
The Scottish Government (SG) and NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) have today awarded BT (EE) with a contract worth up to £350m over the next 6-years, which will see the UK telecoms giant become the sole provider to deliver public sector connectivity across Scotland via the Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN).
The move will complement BT’s investment in future-proofing its infrastructure and accelerate fibre optic and 5G mobile connectivity to some of the most remote parts of Scotland. The contract itself will allow for better communication, data sharing and collaboration across more than 6,000 sites, including 94 public sector organisations (e.g. schools, hospitals, council offices etc.), which can also expect “significantly faster … fibre broadband and mobile connections“.
Some 22 NHS Scotland boards, 278 general and community hospitals and more than 900 GP practices are set to be connected to the network. But as well as bridging the gap between urban and rural areas, benefits for the public are likely to include time saving with patients, for example, being able to be seen remotely by clinicians rather than having to travel long distances across islands.
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Alan Lees, BT’s Director for Business (Scotland), said:
“BT is committed to playing its part in helping to shape and to deliver transformational public sector services for people across Scotland now and into the future.
BT is proud to become the sole provider of next generation connectivity services to the Scottish public sector via the SWAN Framework. We strongly believe in the difference that highly resilient and secure connectivity can make to the delivery of public services in Scotland and with our expertise and investment we can accelerate the digital transformation of services to the public.
This contract will see us deliver a cost effective and innovative communications framework, which will benefit public sector employees, citizens and services in ways that we have not seen before. We have access to the largest next generation networks.
Our mobile network EE was the first to launch 5G in Scotland and EE now has by far the highest levels of 4G coverage across Scotland’s landmass at 75%, which is 8% higher than our nearest competitor. We’re able to help the public sector to do things that they never imagined possible before, supporting our shared ambition of ‘Connecting Scotland for Good.’”
Mary Morgan, CEO of NSS, said:
“This is a significant milestone for NSS, and for the many partner organisations across the public sector who depend upon SWAN, including NHS Scotland. Swift and secure connectivity is at the heart of modern future-facing public services. Robust digital infrastructure is key to successful innovation and service improvements that will benefit citizens, families and communities.
We are pleased to have secured this long-term partnership with BT in Scotland. NSS will continue to manage the SWAN Network effectively on behalf of its members so that together we can deliver for all citizens and stakeholders.”
Sadly, the announcement doesn’t give any indication of the implementation timescale for all this. But you can find out more details about SWAN via the website – https://www.scottishwan.com . So far as we can tell, the deal with BT appears to replace the previous one with Capita, which was first setup some years ago to establish a single shared network and common ICT infrastructure across Scotland’s entire public sector.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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350m / 6k = 58k cost per premise passed on this contract!!!
Taxes are at record levels because the ruling class are playing the monopoly board game as if they were the bank. I wonder who in the scottish govt has a family member sitting in the BT board..
That 350m is primarily operation & maintenance of a pre-existing network to over 6,000 sites (plus some relatively modest capex to additionally connect or setup to BT’s networks, and new connections), so you’re not getting a meaningful number dividing a six year contract “up to” value by the number of connected premises.
Unfashionable though it is to say so, this looks like sensible cross-public sector working to reduce costs. At about £10k per site per year for a WAN that manages data and connectivity for health services, local & national government needs, and education, plus offers a range of additional services I’d suggest that it looks like rather good value.
Andrew G – altnets are doing 10k per premise!! they are a bubble!!!
Also Andrew G – 60k per premise is a good value
It’s build, install and 6 years operation of a managed network not just the cost of passing the premises.
@Sam – This isn’t broadband. It’s a WAN. You may as well compare the cost of a bus ticket to the cost of a car.
Neos (formerly SSE) has only recently finished connecting hundreds of public sector sites (including NHS hospitals) in Aberdeenshire, with newly installed fibre in many cases. So how does this work if BT are now going to be responsible for delivering these services?
The SWAN network in my opinion is a massive waste of bureaucratic money now that BT are establishing fibre routes and a fibre first approach to these areas anyway via R100. And whilst sure that doesn’t have a guaranteed uptime of 100% our current SWAN network certainly doesn’t either! Other routes to ensuring 100% uptime…
It’s not about fibre! Repeat after me:
It’s not about fibre.
It’s not about fibre.
It’s not about fibre.
It’s not even about installing connections for the most part, they’ve already been made. This is about managing a wide area network for a mix of geographically disparate premises, with massive variations in the traffic per site and per connected organisation. A WAN can nail together connectivity over fibre, radio, coax, copper, it can be completely integrated or use multiple network providers, new physical connections can be installed by any suitable
Och I get it’s not only about fibre that’s why I mentioned there is other ways to achieve 100% uptime but I literally work for one of the agencies that pays into SWAN and every connection in our county is fibre supplied leased line by vodafone/cityfibre… Your telling me that BT is going to happily keep paying for Vodafone to supply the line… Seems like our premises is enroute to being dug up again after only 18 months ago getting a CATV connection…
There’s little value for BT in building new connections since the SWAN contract is for managed services and they’ll not be able to bill member organisations for the cost of duplicating existing links. If BT did still want to spend their own money to put in a new connection to overbuild somebody else, then who cares?
In regard of 100% uptime, that’s a dream at these prices, and perhaps at any price. No matter who you are or how much you spend, some event sooner or later takes you down. Even happens from time to time on the vastly expensive, multiply redundant mission critical safety systems for nuclear reactors, air traffic control, financial markets trading systems, or military hardware.
My concern is that our carpark has been ripped up on 6 occasions due to fibre works and fibre changes – Isolated incident I know but how much an effect is this having on our communities. Also, 53k per premises including the managed WAN service I get could be good but we are talking about anything as small as a little GP that used to have a business broadband connection to keep them running…. Sure good value for money for the big places but why does the contract need to cover every single public premises… some are far more important than others so setting out blanket SLA’s across the board is just not appropriate.
Lets just wait and see how much chaos this all ends up, I agree however I do wish they used a vast hybrid of services to cover the land instead of spending 200 grand putting a gig line into a GP to power 3 computers… It could have easily been dealt with via the native FTTP and a 4G backup…
£350m is the total contract value, nowhere does it say that £350m is the cost of providing fibre connectivty.
But sure, don’t let the facts get in the way of a bit of BT bashing…..
Mark Classic case of a little knowledge is a dangerous thing
Yes, this is an IT / WAN contract, which covers quite an array of services. It should not be taken as a contract purely for Dark Fibre delivery.
I might note that it is all well and good your GP having a fantastic internet connection, but if your internet connection is rubbish you are not going to be able to make use of remote consultations are you.
Public sector networks are often how the local fibre networks start. These sites act as anchor tenants and pay the large cost of establishing a fibre backbone. Specifying the cable with extra fibre cores for local PON networks is relatively low.
What a shock, the tax payer giving money to BT once again.
Who would you propose for this?
The logical decision?
@The Facts, I don’t know, but there must be another company that can do it.
Tax payers have been giving BT money for years, slice it of the TV licence not that bothers me as I don’t have a TV licence, money coming from council tax so BT can do broadband in places where they would not.
BT actually are a pretty solid partner in my experience when doing something like this. Believe it is or used to be called BT Enterprise but we always had pretty solid engineers doing any works, and good account management. They used to win on pricing a lot of the time too vs our usual VAR/MSPs, when tendering (they had no incentive to be lowest price to win as it was just hardware purchases) – things like SFP’s would come in dirt cheap vs our VAR.
People see BT and think its just going to be connectivity – it isn’t, it’s the whole service wrap and as soon as you get to this point there’s not many people who do it in house. (Lots of people will do the service wrap, then BT or another will do connectivity) – as a single entity to request things / shout out, BT are pretty solid.
If the whole IT contract provided by BT is good value for money and of good service then I cant see the problem.
@Matt, People see BT and see it as a giant that still has a monopoly, even if it is being decreased. People see Bt as being funded for my projects via the taxpayer. BT have had money from organisations like Fastershire, which is funded by the taxpayers.
Bt is too big and need to split up.
You seem to be saying that government shouldn’t be able to purchase services from BT regardless of value for money?
Any evidence there was an alternative bid that would’ve provided better value to the taxpayer?
What monopoly do you believe BT has?
@Reality Bytes
But it always seems to be BT, I don’t know what alternative bid that would’ve provided better value to the taxpayer, but i bet they have not even looked.
As I have said so many times, too many government fingers in the pie.
@125us, what monopoly have BT got? Umm, let me think. Oh yes a countrywide network, the biggest network in the UK. Don;t say the network is Openreach,because it is Bt. BT owns Openreach, this whole thing that they are independent is a load of bull and is a fudge;.
Bt should be forced to sell off openreach.
News to among others Virgin Media Business that it always seems to be BT.
I’ll stop with a couple of links.
https://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/public-sector/public-services-network/
https://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/customer-stories/london-grid-for-learning/
CityFibre’s anchor tenant on most of their metro networks is the local authority.
BT certainly win public sector business but absolutely not all of it. Others manage public sector networks, provide connectivity or both.
Openreach is irrelevant. BT will pay the same for leased lines from them as everyone else.
This website is so toxic. Small hate groups congregating together
Agree with this. I’ve stopped visiting as often as I used to. Shame as the news is interesting, but I don’t want to be in the same room as some of the total headcases who post comments.
I like the news but how dare people speak their minds and comment on them criticizing my BT!!!
Yeah, I forgot this country is getting to be like China and Russia where we are getting to the stage of not being able to have our say.
That is why the government want to get rid of end-to-end encryption
They don’t want us to criticize how the state spends our own money. Calling it “hate”, toxic or any ist/phobe is an authoritarian ad hominem tactic to put down arguments they cannot logically refute. To the point where they attack the website owner instead of simply ignoring people’s opinions which do not align with their echo chamber
Today Matt Hancock posted about trying to censor people who criticize the state in the online bill and disabled replies because it is incredibly easy to refute his delusional claims
I guess this is why Cityfibre didn’t win it…
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/23143205.scotlands-broadband-builder-linked-israeli-spyware/
pretty tenuous link. Someone who gave company A money gave company B money. So no, it’s likely because CF don’t do a full service wrap, they’re not in that market as far as I know? – they are a connectivity wholesaler.
Not tenuous in my opinion.
The UAE government own Mubadala who part own Cityfibre and have also invested in NSO who have developed the Pegasus spyware.
What really bothers me is the UAE government using the spyware.
As someone said before, money always trumps human rights and people will look the other way.
The contract is for a whole IT solution. Awarding it to CityFibre is like awarding it to Openreach, they can only provide the network link to an exchange.