Spark is to provide the Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct with cloud and wireless communications services under an agreement with the Ministry of Justice.
The $300 million precinct, due to open later this year, will be home to the Ministry of Justice, New Zealand Police, Department of Corrections, New Zealand Fire Service, St John New Zealand, Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, and Canterbury Civil Defence and Emergency Management Group and the Christchurch City Council Civil Defence and Emergency Management.
According to the Justice Ministry, some 2,000 people will work in or use the 42,000 square metre precinct every day.
Spark says the cloud-based ‘telecommunications as a service’ offering will be will be “commercially elastic” with “the ability to be turned on or off, or scaled up or down depending on what’s required.”
To provide redundancy a geographically diverse wide area network is being installed with optical transport network nodes in the precinct itself and into two different exchanges in Christchurch.
Spark says the new network is “designed to be fully flexible and future-proofed, with the underlying infrastructure providing a necessary base upon which services can be easily and seamlessly layered and switched out, allowing the precinct to continue innovating as technology develops into the future.”
Ministry of Justice CEO, Andrew Bridgman said the precinct would be a world-class facility and the telecommunications services would enable a new way of working for the ministry. “Our people in Christchurch will be able to work flexibly using secure ICT services without being bound to their desks.”
“The mobile connectivity will improve the flow of information throughout the precinct from front counters to busy court rooms, improving the service we deliver to the judiciary and our stakeholders while creating a more consistent experience for our customers.”
He added: “The services also allow agencies to easily connect with each other and customers who may be using multiple services at the precinct. … We can also reduce costs for all of the Precinct agencies by sharing ICT infrastructure.”