Southwest One, a Joint Venture (JV) partnership formed in 2007 between Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council, Avon and Somerset Police and computer giant IBM, has announced the development of a new "super-fast" fibre optic broadband network to connect up the County's 269 schools and educational establishments.

The network itself will be built on BT UK's 21st Century Network (21CN) and make use of its national Next Generation Access (NGA) platform and FTTP data download speeds of up to 100Mbps. Rollout is expected to start over the next few weeks and should be largely completed by 31st March 2011.



The new network will also provide a platform for special video and voice teaching applications in the future, such as video-conferencing and improved access to Somerset's e-Learning portfolio of courses. Southwest One will lead and manage the new network itself.