Finalist in Comms National Awards

Date: 21st December 2010

FINALIST IN COMMS NATIONAL AWARDS 2010

A pioneering project has earned Pennine Telecom its fourth awards final placing in as many months. The telecoms and data specialist has been shortlisted for the Comms National Awards 2010 having already won at the Bolton & Bury Business Awards and reached the finals of both the Blue Chip and the Federation of Communication Service Industry’s award schemes.

The company will now head to London’s Hilton Hotel on 14 October to learn if its groundbreaking work for Bury’s Broad Oak Sports College has earned it further glory in the Comms National Awards’ Enterprise Vertical Communications Solution category. The award recognises companies “who demonstrate expertise in understanding the needs of the client and of the industry segment they are addressing” and how they “tailored the application to help their Enterprise client be more effective.”

Pennine will be looking to triumph through its design and implementation of the first wireless home broadband network to be launched by an English state school. The Net@BOSC network has been launched by Broad Oak to tackle the ‘digital divide’ by providing a free, commercial standard broadband service to around 1,000 student households. It will serve not just Broad Oak students but also pupils at its partner primary schools and could then be rolled out to the wider local community.

The school asked for Pennine’s help after it carried out research in 2008 which showed that around 40% of students did not have broadband at home which would give them access to e-learning tools and educational resources. In designing Net@BOSC Pennine had to overcome major technical challenges, such as the density of housing in the school’s core catchment area which could disrupt wireless signal transmission.

Commenting on reaching the Comms National Awards final, the company’s managing director, Andrew Roberts, said: “The fact that Pennine Telecom has now reached the finals of no fewer than four award finals, and taken one trophy, speaks volumes about our wireless expertise. We are very proud of the work we have done for Broad Oak, that it is set to reap great rewards for so many secondary and primary school students and that the expertise and innovation behind it is being recognised.”