Alcatel-Lucent, a leading global network communications provider, announced on Wednesday that it started cooperating with Norway-based Tampnet to upgrade communications hardware for oil and gas facilities that produce resources through both offshore and onshore rigs in the North Sea.

The communications network Tampnet utilizes allows customers to communicate during operations and receive remote support services much like how remote desktop works, except that the remote control interface allows for operations management. The system also provides networking for air traffic between the UK and Norway and hosting for customer emails, Internet connectivity, local networking, and business networking.

Tampnet is a subsidiary of HitecVision, a company whose recent acquisition of North Sea Communications has allowed it to tap into a large pool of fiber optic cabling for networks in Norway. The acquisition also allows Tampet's network to expand itself onto 100 different oil and gas units and five onshore facilities in Norway and the United Kingdom. The increasing amount of traffic, along with the expansion onto newer locations, has forced Tampnet to extend its network infrastructure and enlist the help of an enhanced Internet Protocol/Multiprotocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) solution.

MPLS allows companies to communicate more quickly within a subnet without having to go through nasty routing procedures brought about by traditional network routing equipment. Therefore, the addresses are shorter than the 32-bit IP addresses representing nodes.

Tampnet then called on Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) to provide for its networking needs, with its high-speed bandwidth services that will make the company communicate more efficiently. Tampnet will have access to Alcatel-Lucent's offers and boost its efficiency to reach the levels needed to make customer communication as seamless as possible. In the case of a fiber problem or outage, routing isn't a problem, since real-time monitoring will provide packet re-routing where necessary.

President of Tampnet Per Helge Svensson said in a statement, “Redundancy and robustness is of great importance due to the remote locations of the equipment and our customers need a high-quality communications network to enhance the efficiency of operations. With new and improved high-capacity data services, Alcatel-Lucent’s IP/MPLS solution will enable us to serve the oil and gas industry even better."