Opole city goes intelligent
Opole City Hall is continuing its program to build the Opole Fibre-Optic Information and Communication Network. This super-fast municipal network will serve all public institutions operating within the city. Asseco Poland is going to provide the necessary software, hardware and services.
Opole City Hall is continuing its program to build the Opole Fibre-Optic Information and Communication Network. This super-fast municipal network will serve all public institutions operating within the city. Asseco Poland is going to provide the necessary software, hardware and services.
In 2015, public institutions located in Opole will be connected to a super-fast fiber-optic network called the Opole Fibre-Optic Information and Communication Network (OFICN). The network will be used by more than 30 schools, Opole University, Opole University of Technology, as well as by dozens of other institutions. It is worth mentioning that although OFICN is financed from the City Hall budget, it will serve not only the municipal organizations but also the regional ones. All of this is aimed at improving the quality of life for inhabitants.
OFICN is a high-performance fiber-optic network featuring the Next Generation Network (NGN) / Next Generation Access (NGA) technologies, providing 10 Gbps connectivity among core nodes and 1 Gbps bandwidth for access nodes. It is one of the most modern solutions of this type in Poland.
“Public institutions will be the first to see the results of this change. Local government bodies will be integrated with the municipal document management system. OFICN will enable a very fast exchange of data. For example, it will be possible to transfer an 800 MB file within just a few seconds, this is 10,000 times faster than using an internet connection with a speed of 2 Mbps. Once our servers are upgraded, we will be able to launch a central backup repository. OFICN will be certainly very useful for schools located in Opole, most of which do not have high-speed links,” said Jarosław Starszak, Head of IT Department at Opole City Hall.
OFICN will be connected to the ultrafast nationwide Pioneer network, which is used for conducting research and development, among others, in the fields of information technology and telecommunications, as well as for providing information society services. Opole University is one of 21 centers networked with Pioneer.
OFICN will allow for the creation of special-purpose separate subnets, e.g. for the Crisis Management Center, educational institutions, libraries or hospitals. This will enable such user groups to use common databases and applications, exchange files, and collaborate while seeing each other online. All of this will facilitate the implementation of secure, centralized and more efficient solutions at a lower cost.
“The approach demonstrated by the Opole local government is worthy of the 21st century. Modern infrastructure lays a solid foundation for the introduction of most innovative solutions to serve the local community. We are pleased that more and more organizations in Poland are aware of this fact. We cooperate in the construction of broadband networks with multiple local governments. These include large urban centers, such as Radom, Elbląg or Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, but also smaller, rural and urban municipalities which understand that modern infrastructure is the key to their development,” said Andrzej Dopierała, Vice President of the Management Board of Asseco Poland.
In the long term, the new network infrastructure will contribute significantly to improving the comfort of life of Opole inhabitants. Mobile applications will help find a free parking space. Intelligent traffic control will increase the level of road safety. It will be possible to manage the traffic lights centrally as well as to predict the driving time based on the actual intensity of traffic. This will apply also to the public transportation.
Moreover, the project will contribute to better safety by enhancing the coordination of municipal security services – OFICN can serve as a backbone for a separate network dedicated to the Crisis Management Center. It will allow for instant sharing of medical test results as well as for conducting consultations at a distance, including remote participation in a surgery. This will be enabled by transferring information directly from operating rooms, hence there will be a chance to consult particularly difficult cases with specialists from other cities.
The project is co-financed in 85% from EU funds under the Regional Operational Programme of Opole Province for the years 2007-2013 – priority II “Information Society”, measure 2.1 “Infrastructure for the use of ICT tools”. The first phase of the project implementation involved building 20 kilometres of fibre-optic network which linked together nearly 100 public institutions in Opole. The second stage will include the installation of active network devices such as switches or routers. The project is implemented comprehensively by Asseco Poland that has been selected in a tendering procedure. The company will construct and launch the NGN/NGA network, provide network management software, as well as train network administrators. The project will be executed under the agreement concluded between Asseco Poland and Opole City Hall, with a gross value of approx. PLN 7.9 million. The completion of work is expected in October 2014.
