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BT helps UK stay safe in the air
Wednesday May 14th 2008. Posted: 08:00
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Bob Harrison and Richard Storey, of the BT Global Services global defence and security team, at Spinnaker Tower
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BT Global Services is celebrating the completion of a complex project for NATS - formerly National Air Traffic Services - which involved engineers working in remote locations all over the UK.
NATS provides air traffic control services to civilian and military aircraft flying in UK airspace, and over the eastern part of the North Atlantic. The global defence and security team migrated all NATS’s services on to a new BT-supported network during the major upgrade to its safety-critical wide area network (WAN). The network supports NATS’s ability to handle 2.4 million flights carrying more than 220 million passengers a year, and helps manage information from radar stations and communications between pilots and ground control. During the upgrade, engineers were sent to such diverse NATS locations as the top of a hill in the Pennines - only accessible in winter by snowmobile - and islands in the Shetlands closer to Norway than to London. At an event at the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, more than 60 people from NATS, BT and delivery partner Nortel gathered to mark the successful conclusion of the three-year roll-out. Phil Siveter, BT Global Services client director for NATS, said: “The event also provided the opportunity to officially thank some key individuals in the project team.” NATS programme manager Giles Richardson said: “This network is a vital part of our technology strategy and gives us a great deal of flexibility. It is the base on which everything else sits and links every communication system within NATS. It’s been a complicated project but a good example of team working.”
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Last updated:
07:55