In his last article, George Knowles explored how a Wide Area Network (WAN) is much more than just a service—it’s a strategic asset and a key platform enabling Local Governments to drive service improvement and operational efficiencies. Today, he continues this discussion by diving into how TNP constructs WANs within some of our core Public Sector verticals.

Before we get into the specifics, let’s quickly recap the concept of WAN as a platform. According to Gartner, a platform in the context of a digital platform is a product that serves or enables other products or services (https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/platform-digital-business, n.d.). By viewing our WANs as platforms, we can serve and enable multiple business functions, leading to greater resilience, innovation, and service excellence.

So, how do TNP put this concept into practice? Let me explain. Based on our experience a side from central government and national agency’s most public sector organisations typically manage a metropolitan or regional area. In this case it makes much more sense to consume and house services locally, rather than relying on long-distance connections across the UK. And yes, for the cloud enthusiasts out there, I’m still talking about cloud consumption—just more in the vein of an edge compute model, rather than multiple hops around a national network (most cases a big black hole) before reaching your favourite SaaS application or Public Cloud Partner.

With that in mind at TNP, we opt in most cases to create a single active network infrastructure within a region or metropolitan area, dedicated to a public sector organisation. This serves as the cornerstone of our WAN designs, enabling network services to be provided more efficiently, securely, and flexibly.

The foundation of our WAN is a single physical active network, utilising dedicated ethernet, Openreach OSA, or Dark Fibre to create a private connectivity fabric anchored in that serving organisations locality. By implementing a high-capacity core, the WAN provides an organisation with a private connectivity fabric independent of the main carriers, operating at speeds of 10 to 100G+, enabling a high-performance tech ecosystem with flexible access to the required services and applications without bandwidth limitations. This approach allows public sector organisations to build a network capable of supporting multiple service overlays by layering separate virtual networks for each business unit. This effectively turns the WAN into an enablement platform across a multidisciplinary environment.

Taking this a step further, organisations can consolidate often disparate networks, whether it be CCTV, UTC, or Corporate Data, reducing costs, streamlining operational management, and increasing security with a harmonised approach to threat management across all service overlays. What’s often overlooked, however, are the enablement opportunities a properly constructed WAN can provide. By building your own connectivity fabric, not only does it support your organisation’s ability to consolidate, but it also empowers you to support new initiatives. You can easily spin up new networks to support smart city aspirations, place-based initiatives, or tech incubation spaces, driving economic and sustainability improvements within your city or region.

While the core of the WAN sets the foundation, it’s often the edge of the network where agility is most required. This need has only grown in the post-COVID world, as public sector estate strategies evolve, demanding greater flexibility at the edge. TNP addresses this need by choosing strategic aggregation hubs across a metropolitan or regional area to anchor a core network. These aggregation points serve as hubs for edge site access, allowing TNP to provide organisations with access to a range of technologies and carriers—whether established carriers, regional programmes, or alternative network providers—complemented by best-in-class technology such as Ethernet, FTTP, SOGEA, or 4/5G. It’s no longer a case of one carrier with a fixed set of technologies for the term of your contract, but an ever-evolving ecosystem enabling you to deploy the right service when you need it most.

In line with best-in-class technology and carriers, there should be contractual flexibility to meet the needs of service delivery and shifting estate strategies. To address this, TNP deploys edge service contracts on terms of 30 days to 12 months, depending on customer requirements, providing genuine flexibility at the edge while reducing spend on early termination fees or unused services. The edge of the network also provides opportunities for cross-agency collaboration. The ability to easily interlink services with neighbouring public sector partners—be it CCTV control rooms across Councils and Police Forces or social care teams and the NHS—can significantly improve service outcomes through seamless data flows while also reducing cost for what’s often replicated services.

Looking to security we are all aware the threat landscape is constantly evolving, and staying on top of it is a challenge on the best of days. TNP addresses this within our WAN provisions by building security into the network natively, from the edge to the core, following Zero Trust principles that provide clear segmentation and continuous validation. We then layer on an SD-WAN overlay for enhanced visibility, advanced routing, and threat protection.

Bringing this all together is the overall management of the WAN, which is often where things can unravel. Technology serves as the pillars of enablement, but it still requires management to tie it all together. Too often, organisations hand over complete control to a supplier, only to lose visibility of their asset while being stuck behind a ticketing system for every add, move, or change. On the other hand, those who opt to manage everything in-house often struggle to resource effectively in the back drop of skills shortages.

At TNP, we believe in flexible management. By adopting a platform approach that leverages automation, we streamline repetitive tasks, reducing the effort required to deploy, configure, and install network infrastructure. This can be fully managed by TNP or co-managed with a flexible, consumption-based service wrap, augmenting TNP’s expertise with your team’s capabilities to maximise the use of your technical resources and drive further agility.

And that’s a wrap! I hope this article has been useful and maybe even a little thought-provoking in terms of how a WAN could (and arguably should) be constructed within a regional or metropolitan area.

If any of my ramblings sound interesting and something you’d like to explore in more detail, please feel free to reach out—I’d be happy to host a deeper dive.