Kildare County Council has awarded a €170,000 contract to Cork-based ICT-provider Exigent Networks to supply, install and support a new high-capacity wireless wide area network (WAN) for Kildare County Council after it won a competitive tender.
The network will be built within six months. Kildare County Council is one of the largest county councils in Ireland and the network will securely connect 24 public-sector sites, including council offices, town councils, fire stations and libraries from Leixlip in the north of the county, to Athy in the south.
Bernard Higgins, head of information systems at Kildare County Council, said the new WAN would help improve the quality of public services in the county.
“Exigent will connect our staff to a secure, high-speed and centrally managed network which will enable them to share resources and knowledge, so they can better serve the people of Kildare,” Higgins said.
“This new infrastructure has the potential to facilitate better connectivity and greater bandwidth for our various public offices, including the fourteen branch library premises throughout the county.”
The council currently uses contended ADSL technology which may not be capable of supporting future expansion of council services, nor can it deliver scalable efficiencies by allowing several facilities to share resources to the required standard in a cost-effective manner.
Cillian McCarthy, sales director of Exigent Networks, said it was an exciting project to win and that securing this contract will serve to further enhance the company’s existing excellent working relationship with other local authorities throughout the country.
“I believe our multi-deployment experience in delivering large-scale wireless projects and the outstanding level of detail we provided to the council in relation to the network build were strong elements in our tender submission,” McCarthy said.
“The new WAN will eliminate the risk of obsolescence for Kildare County Council because it delivers the bandwidth and the right mix of technology necessary to meet council’s future application needs as they arise.”
Exigent Networks has been growing rapidly and employs 15 people, turning over €2m. The company is providing network integration services to a range of clients in Ireland and tendered successfully for the ongoing maintenance of Cork County Council’s wireless WAN, providing cover for the entire licensed and unlicensed radio network infrastructure consisting of more than 140 radio links.
Other Government organisations Exigent has worked for include Waterford City Council, Fingal County Council, Galway County Council, Cork City Council and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.
Photo: John Treacy, IS projects leader, Kildare County Council; Pat Downing, wireless infrastructure manager, Exigent Networks; and Cillian McCarthy, sales director, Exigent Networks
