Nokia (News - Alert) announced today that it will be providing an advanced communications network to the Placer County Water Agency (PCWA) in Northern California to support its hydro-electric power generation and water distribution services in the area.
PCWA is the primary water resource agency for Placer County, CA (News - Alert). The area consists of the 1500-square miles between the Sacramento Valley and the Sierra Nevada mountains. PCWA is responsible for water resource planning and management, retail and wholesale supply of irrigation water and drinking water to more than 200,000 customers. Additionally, it operates five hydroelectric plants that produce roughly one million megawatt hours annually.
For these reasons, PCWA was desperately in need of a new communications network. Thanks to this new agreement, Nokia will replace PCWA's aging communications infrastructure with a modern Internet Protocol/Multi-protocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) and packet microwave network. The hope is that this new setup will support a range of critical utility applications and enable PCWA to more effectively utilize and manage its power generation, water resources and water supply.
The announcement discusses the specifics as follows: “Managed by Nokia's Network Services Platform (NSP), the network features Nokia's 7705 Service Aggregation Router (SAR) portfolio and 9500 Microwave Packet Radio (MPR) which are tailored to support critical applications essential for utility operations, addressing their stringent requirements for security, reliability and resiliency. The high network flexibility allows PCWA to migrate existing SCADA system traffic and support new bandwidth-intensive video traffic on the same network without compromising performance.”
Kamal Ballout, head of the Global Energy Segment for Nokia, commented on how this move is a piece of a much larger puzzle when it comes to Nokia’s overall plan. Ballout stated, “Nokia has invested heavily in recent years on addressing the unique requirements of utilities for modernizing and converging their communications in order to enhance operational efficiency, reliability and safety. We are thrilled that PCWA has put their trust in Nokia to play such an important role in meeting the needs of their customers.”
Edited by
Maurice Nagle
