Viatel has beaten off competition from Eircom, UPC, Vodafone and many others to win a significant portion of the HEAnet Post-Primary School’s 100Mb/s broadband contract to connect schools in Dublin, Kildare and Meath. Viatel is one of Europe’s largest network owners and brings a range of new services to enterprise and wholesale customers in Ireland by offering very high capacity, low latency and cost effective connectivity solutions within Ireland and out to Europe and worldwide.
HEAnet is Ireland’s National Education and Research Network and provides cutting edge Internet and associated ICT and e-Infrastructure services to Educational and Research organisations throughout Ireland. Since 2005, as part of the Schools Broadband Programme, HEAnet has acted as network manager of a centralised Schools Network on behalf of the Department of Education & Skills.  The Schools Network takes advantage of HEAnet’s high speed backbone and Internet connections.
Under this new contract Viatel will provide fully symmetrical and un-contended 100 Mbps access connections to 176 post-primary schools in the Dublin, Kildare and Meath region.
Viatel has considerable experience and expertise in providing broadband connectivity to schools and other educational facilities throughout Ireland and have been a key partner in various Government Departments since the first roll out of broadband access to schools.
Colm Piercy, CEO of Viatel, welcomed the news of the contract win stating; “Viatel has a long history of providing broadband services to schools. We are delighted to be working with HEAnet on delivering this service which will provide incredible opportunities for teachers and students alike, to avail of the most recent advances in technology in the classroom.”
“Viatel is the leading provider of high speed broadband to Irish primary and secondary schools and is delighted to continue to play a crucial role in helping to deliver key government objectives in the education sector through the use of ICT. One of the central planks of government policy is integrating ICT into teaching and learning at the earliest possible time at both primary and secondary education. In addition to providing high speed services in cities and urban areas, Viatel has been pioneering in the manner in which it has connected often rural and isolated schools to the broadband network, ensuring that all students, irrespective of their location, can avail of the benefits of high speed broadband access”, concluded Piercy.
 
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NOTES TO EDITORS
More information on Viatel can be found at http://www.viatel.com
Media Contact
Cathal Lee
Lee Communications
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+353 86 7771415
+353 1 5249585
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About Viatel
Viatel, part of the Digiweb Group, provides Connectivity and ICT solutions tailored specifically for larger enterprise, public sector, wholesale and carrier customers across Europe.
 
Viatel leverages an extensive portfolio of leading voice, cloud, managed services and data solutions with its wholly owned European fibre and data centre infrastructure. It’s advanced fibre optic backbone network connects 8 countries, 35 main cities, over 120 European data centres, and has metro fibre reach into the major carrier houses, data centres and the main Internet Exchanges.
With data centres in Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels, Viatel also owns over 8,500km of fibre network infrastructure which it has equipped with high capacity optical DWDM technology and multi service platforms. Viatel is a preferred connectivity partner of London Stock Exchange, and is directly connected to the largest content distribution networks, public cloud platforms, and internet companies globally.
 
 
About HEAnet
HEAnet is Ireland’s National Education and Research Network, providing cutting edge Internet, associated ICT and e-Infrastructure services to Educational and Research organisations throughout Ireland.
 
HEAnet’s e-Infrastructure services underpin academic research and education activity in Ireland with approximately 200,000 students & staff (third-level) and approximately 800,000 students & staff (first and second-level) relying on the HEAnet network each day for their learning and research needs.
 
Established in 1983 by the Irish Universities with the support of the Higher Education Authority, HEAnet provides essential e-Infrastructure services across all levels of the Irish education system. Our high quality resilient bandwidth network connects all Irish Universities, all Institutes of Technology and other higher education institutions (HEIs), along with research organisations, and all primary and post-primary schools across Ireland.
It is HEAnet that connects these Irish learners and researchers to the Internet, on-line educational resources, and to fellow national educational and research networks in Europe, the USA and the rest of the world.
 
HEAnet is committed to delivering, supporting and maintaining the most cost-effective and technically advanced e-Infrastructure and services to meet the needs of its user community. Cost-efficiency is at the heart of the HEAnet operation as its core mission statement is to deliver value for money.