North Yorkshire County Council has awarded its entire Wide Area Network (WAN) broadband contract, which includes schools, libraries, disaster recovery and council offices and is worth £42.4m over 10 years, to NYnet Ltd.

NYnet is a unique commercial enterprise set up in collaboration between the Council and Yorkshire Forward to ensure that regional businesses and public bodies are "not left behind the rest of the world".

The contract, which will see the migration of the entire NYCC network over 2 years for 484 sites, has already started with the Disaster Recovery and Storage Area Network (SAN) facilities being connected in Scarborough.

Whilst NYnet cannot provide its services direct to North Yorkshires businesses, it is hoped that ISPs, who have been reluctant to venture out of the major conurbation areas, will see NYnet as an attractive commercial opportunity.

Full migration commences in the Spring of this year, and all NYCC services will have transferred to NYnet by late 2009.