FT spends £3.5m on WAN from BT

The Financial Times has signed a contract worth £3.5m for BT to connect 21 of its print and distribution sites and 30 of its office sites around the world.

The FT is migrating from Frame Relay technology to an IP VPN-based network that uses MPLS, a protocol that allows greater flexibility and the prioritising of data.

The contract was won after a tender process that gathered around eight serious bids, according to FT group IT director Ian Cohen.

He told silicon.com: "Our challenge to BT was for them to be more of a strategic partner. In the end the whole process took little more than three months."

Although the FT has worked with BT for a number of years, the publisher entertained approaches from suppliers that serve other parts of Pearson, the FT's parent company.

Cohen said the choice of service provider and technology was for reasons of flexibility, cost and minimum amount of disruption.

Cohen said: "Using MPLS was a bit of an easy sell because we knew the technology and wanted to move to it. But BT had to understand our direction and what we want to do as a business."

Lately BT has been making a big deal of being one of the few carriers to offer IP and MPLS-based services in around 1,000 cities, mainly competing on a global level with providers such as AT&T, Cable and Wireless, Equant and Infonet.

"The key is that the network is managed - we don't expect BT to own all the circuits around the world but they must manage a network," Cohen added.