Onecom signs bumper £2.8m deal with Co-op

Dealer will provide 450 UK stores with “total connectivity” solution including IT and fixed line

B2B dealer Onecom has won a three-year deal worth £2.8 million with the Co-op to provide its 450 stores in Central England with a ‘total connectivity’ solution, including fixed line and IT.

The contract had been held by managed service provider Redcentric for the past 12 years.The Fareham-based Vodafone platinum partner, which beat six other high-profile providers in the tender, which could not be named, as part of the deal.

Onecom has installed a VPLS WAN Network for the company providing bandwidth management and super resilience.

The in-store model being deployed is a combination of fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), ADSL and 4G internet con- nections meaning if the fibre broadband goes down, it fails over to ADSL and if that goes down, it fails over to 4G. Onecom has provided each store with routers to support this.

Onecom solutions director James Bannister (pictured) said the firm won the contract because of the innovation the connectiv- ity solutions it can provide, as well as the mix of experience in mobile and fixed line it can bring.

“Where we bring our experience of mobile into the fixed line space, we were able to come up with a solution that combined the two in stores, hence the 4G deployment.”

Co-operative Central England head of IS operations Mark Woodyatt said: “We are customer service-focused so wanted someone to really wow us. Onecom’s solution was way in excess from what we saw from anyone else.

“We were also blown away by the promise of customer ser- vice from Onecom. It is some- thing they are superb at and that extends to project man- agement. There have been no issues with accountability and getting things done. They have engaged the Central England IS team really well and become an important partner really quickly.”