The Provision of a BT Exchange Space & Power

When Greater Manchester’s Digital Blueprint was launched in February 2020 it included a specific ambition to Extend Our World Class Digital Infrastructure as a cross cutting enabler to underpin the city regions economic and social ambitions.

A key element of this has been the GM Local Full Fibre Network (LFFN) “anchor tenancy” programme that is in the final stages of laying up to 2,700km of new fibre infrastructure across Greater Manchester leveraging DCMS funding plus investment from GMCA(FRS), TFGM and seven of the councils. This work will be complete by early 2022/23 and will connect approx. 1,600 public sites drive fibre into new areas of Greater Manchester.

‘Lighting’ the fibre is the next step, each of the public sector organisations that are part of the LFFN anchor tenancy programmes operate their own networks. Recognising that LFFN is providing a shared fibre infrastructure, in 2020 several of the partners considered the option for jointly procuring network services across the fibre infrastructure for their own organisational needs and to take advantage of the economies of scale.

A set of options were considered and it was agreed to collaboratively light the fibre with other LFFN partners giving high speed gigabit access to the GM region and all public sector bodies, by implementing a next generation, software-defined, integrated gigabit network.

Early in 2021 Bury, Oldham and Rochdale and Stockport Councils plus TFGM and GMCA(FRS) went to market to select a partner to design, build and operate the GM One Network via a competitive dialogue process. A preferred supplier was selected in December and GMCA are working with the preferred supplier with a view to signing contracts and commencing the project early in April.

The core network will be a segment routed network transport that that will be delivered on top of the LFFN network covering 33 BT exchanges around the Greater Manchester region.

• Each exchange will have a Cisco NCS-57C3-MOD platform providing the core Segment Routing and P/PE functionality for GM One. The platform is routed optical networking (RON) ready and can be expanded to provide FSN to FSN speeds of 400Gbps.
• The Cisco N540X-6Z18G-D will provide access aggregation for exchanges with a higher density of partner site connections.