The UK Universities Funding Council has announced the go-ahead for the new SuperJanet Joint-Academic-Network and has awarded the contract, worth UKP18m over four years, to British Telecommunications Plc. The phone company is to collaborate with the Science & Engineering Research Council and the Universities Funding Council on the design and implementation. To be used for the transmission of speech data and images, the network is initially to connect six academic institutions, and will use Synchronous Digital Hierarchy technology in conjunction with British Telecom’s new Switched Multimegabit Data Service. Running at 1Gbps, the network will be around 1,000 times faster than the existing Janet network, which it will complement. The six-site pilot will be established between January and March next year, and will connect Cambridge, Edinburgh and Manchester Universities, the Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, University College London, and the Research Council’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. SuperJanet will eventually serve about 50 sites with the potential for more if funding is available. Initial applications will include distance teaching, electronic publishing, library document distribution, medical imaging, multimedia information services, distributed group communications and advanced data visualisation.
