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BT wins £46.9m network deal with FirstGroup
Infrastructure upgrade links up sites across the pond

By Dan Ilett

Published: Tuesday 07 March 2006

BT is heading up a £46.9m, five-year IT services contract to revamp the infrastructure of transport company FirstGroup.

The business consortium - comprised of BT, HP and US-based MegaPath Networks - will link up 700 FirstGroup sites in the UK and 300 in the US.

A spokesman for FirstGroup told silicon.com: "BT's going to connect all our sites. This is the first stage of the project."

He explained that most of the changes will be transparent to customers. "Apart from our IT being more efficient, there's probably not going to be much [difference customers] will see. It's more about the back office, apart from generally improved business processes," he said.

Under the contract, dubbed Project Maxim, BT is to bolster security on company desktops, build two new data centres and a helpdesk in Preston.

BT said the consortium is also to build new wide-area networks between the UK and the US, and client software.

FirstGroup, which has 67,000 employees around the world, owns a fleet of more than 9,000 buses and operates four UK railway franchises as well as operations in the US.