C&W seals £1.3m Ryanair network deal

Cable & Wireless has won a £1.3m contract to upgrade Ryanair's core communications network.

As part of the three-year deal, C&W will upgrade the budget airline's network to a high bandwidth IP virtual private network (VPN) to accommodate the company's rapid expansion throughout Europe.

The new network will allow Ryanair to handle the increased levels of traffic from customers logging on to its website, and will enable the company to offer additional features to enhance its customer service.

The fully managed network will provide improved speed and resilience, which Ryanair says is important for its frequent marketing promotions when there are surges in transactions.

The 15-site migration will provide Ryanair with increased capacity to process large volumes of data, prioritised depending on how critical it is to the business, such as customer transactions, or whether it needs to be delivered in real-time, such as voice.

Howard Millar, deputy CEO of Ryanair, said in a statement: "Ryanair is aggressively extending the number of routes and services we offer in Europe. Passenger numbers are expected to grow by 50 per cent in the next year alone. We have full confidence that our internal and external networks can match our growth expectations and customer requirements.”