Alcatel-Lucent wins contract from Tampnet

Alcatel-Lucent has been contracted by Norway’s Tampnet to enhance the flexibility and resilience of its high-capacity communications network serving oil and gas exploration and production facilities both offshore and onshore in and around the North Sea. Tampnet’s parent company, HitecVision, recently acquired North Sea Communications, which managed an extensive fibre optic network throughout the region. As a result of this acquisition, Tampnet’s network now serves nearly 100 oil and gas platforms and five onshore locations including Stavanger in Norway and Aberdeen and London in the UK. With more locations and increasing traffic, Tampnet needed to update its existing communications network and move to a more efficient Internet Protocol/Multiprotocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS)-based platform. Alcatel-Lucent’s IP/MPLS platform will provide the superior speed, bandwidth and service capabilities needed to ensure operational efficiency across Tampnet’s expanded network. Tampnet will gain the resilience and flexibility required to quickly route its customers’ traffic from the offshore sites back to the onshore facilities. In case of any undersea fibre cable issues or platform outages, real-time monitoring of the network will ensure that traffic can swiftly be re-directed to alternative routes, so that there is no interruption in customer service. Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will provide its 7750 Service Router and 7705 Service Aggregation Router portfolio as well as the 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) and 5650 Control Plane Assurance Manager (CPAM), all suited to the demanding requirements of the oil and gas industry due to their high resilience and performance.