BRADFORD, England, May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Yorkshire Water has won many awards for customer service and holds the British government's Charter Mark for Service Excellence. In 2006 they were voted utility company of the year for an unprecedented third consecutive year, finishing ahead of all other water, gas, electricity, and telecoms companies.
Pursuing further efficiencies, Yorkshire Water looked for a way to retain their proven voice switches and reduce leased line costs. The first steps in 2003 involved the elimination of a number of costly 2 Mbps lines by carrying voice traffic over their own packet-switched core network.
Two PABXs were connected to RAD Data Communications' IPmux-1 TDM-over-IP (TDMoIP(R)) pseudowire gateways, which convert synchronous TDM voice and signalling traffic into packets for transmission over IP or any other packet switched infrastructure. To facilitate this transmission, Yorkshire Water commissioned RAD distribution partner Open Networks Engineering, based in Bishops Stortford, to provide the expertise on how to carry voice traffic over an IP network. "This working relationship with Open Networks has supported our systems convergence transformation," said Mr Steve Groves, Senior Network Analyst at YW. "The business case to eliminate our expensive leased lines, which we used to carry voice, and migrate traffic to our existing IP data network was compelling," added Matthew Rowe, Senior Network Analyst at YW.
Migrating to an MPLS Network
Later in 2006, when YW migrated to an MPLS network, there was a need to carry voice from their remote WANs, and the original single-port IPmux units at the central office were redeployed at these remote sites. Once again, Open Networks were able to facilitate YW in utilising QoS to carry voice traffic over the WAN. To accommodate all of the new outstations, an eight-port IPmux-8 central site aggregation solution was installed to transport traffic from multiple E1 trunks over the packet-based network. Open Networks helped again by introducing an echo canceller to further enhance the voice quality for all inbound and outbound calls throughout the system.
"Open Networks have supported us all the way with this project and now supply our group with engineering support both during and after regular business hours," noted Mathew Rowe. "They have aided YW in developing redundant back-up paths and an improved management visibility of sequence errors and jitter on the network," he continued. "This is a great improvement over the old TDM multiplexers and assists with all troubleshooting situations."
"By employing RAD's TDMoIP gateways, we have fulfilled the brief to improve Yorkshire Water's cost and performance efficiency whilst extending the life of their existing assets," concluded Mr JP Steward, General Manager of Open Networks Engineering Ltd. "It also means that YW have a strong network and are ready to move to new VoIP soft switch PBXs when their investment cycle dictates and the technology matures."
About Open Networks Engineering Ltd.
After more than a decade of excellent service and growth, Open Networks are nearing their aim of becoming the single point of contact for all major networking requirements. Their experience and knowledge allows them to offer products and services to carriers, corporates, government and systems integrators. Indeed, for national and international government departments and organisations they have set up a specialist division dedicated to the unique and potentially complex applications that are prevalent in this market segment.
As a solutions provider, they can design genuine improvements to customers' networks using a vast spectrum of products and services and superior technical knowledge. Open Networks' solutions allow customers to get the most from their network budgets with savings in bandwidth where possible, especially with satellite solutions.
Plus with their installation, maintenance and network management services, all coordinated from their office near Stansted Airport, they can provide that all-important peace of mind.
Open Networks site: http://www.one.co.uk
About RAD
Established in 1981, privately owned RAD Data Communications has achieved international recognition as a major manufacturer of high quality access equipment for data communications and telecommunications applications. These solutions serve the data and voice access requirements of service providers, incumbent and new carriers, and enterprise networks, by reducing infrastructure investment costs while boosting competitiveness and profitability. The company's installed base exceeds 10,000,000 units and includes more than 150 carriers and operators around the world. These customers are supported by 23 RAD offices and more than 300 channel partners in 164 countries.
RAD is a member of the RAD Group of companies, a world leader in networking and internetworking product solutions.
RAD Data Communications site: http://www.rad.com
Contact Bob Eliaz, RAD Data Communications Tel: +972-3-6458134 bob@rad.com
Contact: Bob Eliaz, RAD Data Communications, Tel: +972-3-6458134, bob@rad.com
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