GSN revamp likely to cut costs

Government agencies can expect to save more than 30 per cent on telecommunications bills when the Government Shared Network (GSN) is relaunched at the end of November, its main supplier says.

The GSN was commissioned in 2005 to provide cheaper voice and data services for government agencies, but the Government axed it in February because its revenues were only one-third of that expected and services were unreliable.

Information technology services firm Datacraft and Wellington subcontractor FX Networks were subsequently selected to resurrect the network.

Datacraft New Zealand managing director Robin Hartendorp says it has bought the parts of the old network it "needed to help with transition".

It did not buy IBM servers and platforms used to manage the network, preferring to use a management system developed by its British parent company, Dimension Data, he says.

"There is nothing in the market that compares with it in terms of the transparency it gives a client. They get a portal so they can see their own network, their network performance, the service level agreement and their capacity."

The old GSN was "over-engineered" and agencies could not see how it was performing, Mr Hartendorp says.

Eight of the 14 agencies that were customers of the previous GSN have signed on to use the new network, and Datacraft is in talks with the other six as well as three other large organisations.

"The savings for them will be huge," he says. "We're picking in excess of 30 per cent, compared with what other telcos provide in the market."

Datacraft and FX Networks will take over the existing GSN on October 1 and expect to have all 109 sites around New Zealand hooked up to the new network by the end of November, he says.

Seven sites have been connected so far, and the firms plan to triple the size of the network to 300 sites by the end of next year.

- © Fairfax NZ News