The background

South West Communications Group provides Ecotricity with an environmentally-friendly local area network using point to point microwave technology.

Ecotricity is based in Stroud, Gloucestershire and is an electricity company with a difference. It uses the money its takes from its customers and spends it on clean forms of power such as wind energy. Ecotricity has been building wind turbines and selling electricity across the country since 1996. It supplies businesses that include Lush and the Co-operative Bank.

The challenge

Ecotricity had bought an additional office close to its existing headquarters and also had a third site; a yard that was situated across a railway track a couple of miles away. Ecotricity wanted to create a single local area network (LAN) for data use across the 3 sites.

The link between the head office and the new office would need to be capable of coping with 2Tb of data, as it would be used as its disaster recovery site, whereas the link to the yard would be required for less crucial, but nonetheless important, data use.

Ecotricity’s management was also keen to avoid having to dig up its surrounding area to lay data cables and was looking for a greener alternative that did not involve months of disturbance.

The solution

South West Communications Group installed Motorola PTP600 Spectra point to point microwave devices at the two main sites and a Redline 18Mb device between head office and the yard site. The solution included the following:

• Full site survey including computer modeling
• 300Mb half-duplex link between the head office and the new office
• An 18Mb link between the head office and the yard
• On-site installation of equipment
• Health & safety assessments
• System testing and optimization
• Ongoing maintenance and support

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