Telewest Business, a division of Telewest Communications and established in 1992, currently provides high-speed voice, data and internet communications to 74,100 business customers across the UK.

Customers from small and medium sized businesses, the public sector and corporate businesses receive their services over a broadband network that combines highbandwidth fibre optic technology with modern digital transmission and switching techniques.
This network, built entirely from scratch over the past decade, currently covers parts of London and the South East, Bristol and the South West, Birmingham and the West Midlands, Yorkshire, Merseyside, Tyneside and Scotland.

In 1998, Telewest completed its national backbone network, linking the regional franchises. This network has enabled Telewest to expand its range of voice and data communications services for the business market.
Telewest Business’s broadband services enable organisations to improve their communications and pass the benefits to customers. One such example is the work carried out with financial organisation, Bristol & West over the past few years.

Bristol & West, part of the Bank of Ireland Group, has an IPVPN (Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network) Wide Area Network, which connects 137 branches throughout the UK. The service enables Bristol & West to deliver its mission-critical voice, data and Internet communication across Telewest’s network, providing a secure, resilient environment for transfer of the company’s data.
Telewest’s IPVPN uses MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) technology, which means that Bristol & West can predetermine the priority of traffic over the network. This ensures the effective and timely delivery of key information across Telewest’s infrastructure and improves communications for both staff and customers.

Kevin Bustin, director of IS for Bristol & West says: “A resilient, reliable, secure network is key to the effective running of our operation. The IPVPN solution from Telewest Business fulfils these requirements exactly, and Telewest’s round-the-clock network monitoring means we can be assured our communications are in safe hands.”
As well as supplying an IPVPN solution, Telewest Business is the primary supplier of voice services to Bristol & West. These include ISDN channels, Indirect Access services for nationwide branches, and private circuits for voice and data transfers. Telewest also provides Bristol & West’s Bristol Metropolitan Area Network, delivering large amounts of bandwidth between sites. Telewest Business fully manages the service, which is monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the service is flexible and scaleable so that other branches can be added to the network as necessary.