FPS Mobility fully entrusts WAN migration project to Belnet

"The FPS Mobility and Transport oversees everything that moves in the air, on the road, on the railways and on the water," explains Stijn Fouquaert. "It does this in collaboration with our partners at the regional, federal and international levels. We operate from a central office in Brussels, and also have sites throughout Belgium, including Ostend, Eupen, Ghent and Antwerp. This geographical spread enables us to provide services that better serve citizens' needs locally." 

Much coordination and planning 

The FPS Mobility and Transport began the migration process in late 2023. Geert De Groote continues: "One of the challenges of this project lay in the fact that we do not own all the buildings where our staff are employed. In some sites, we rent space from another government agency or from a commercial party. That entails much coordination and planning and sometimes required excavations and new cables to be laid. This in turn requires permits and often permission from the building owner, but nevertheless this has had little impact on turnaround time. The first site migrated at the end of March 2024 and the last one on 7 November."

"From now on, Belnet is our single point of contact for all our questions related to WAN connectivity. That'll save us a lot of time and money."

Geert De Groote, Project Manager at FPS Mobility and Transport

The pace 

De Groote and Fouquaert also point out the important role of Belnet when it comes to permits and consents. "Belnet did a great deal for us in that regard to keep up the pace and also always kept us well informed of progress," says Fouquaert. 

De Groote then outlines how Belnet used a structured approach to first survey each site for the existing features: "This site survey gave us insight into what is needed for connectivity. Belnet used this as the starting point for the actual migration. Depending on the outcome of the survey, additional cabling was sometimes required or we could simply install Customer Premises Equipment. In that regard, Belnet also provided all documentation and a technical drawing of the situation before and after the migration." 

Single point of contact 

When it comes to the benefits of the migration, Fouquaert and De Groote mention in particular the fact that FPS Mobility has completely outsourced the issues of connectivity. Stijn Fouquaert: "In the past, as a service, we had to look for a provider ourselves every few years, which put a heavy strain on our capacity. "Now, Belnet is our single point of contact for all our questions related to WAN connectivity, which will save us a lot of time and money." When we first heard about the FedWAN project, we were afraid that Belnet would be an additional link in the service causing potential delay and we would have to deal with both Belnet AND a telecom provider. But it turned out to be just the other way around: Belnet handles everything under one roof, while it has also become very clear to us that Belnet and Telenet work together very closely and efficiently." 

Knowledge sharing 

Geert De Groote also mentions the knowledge sharing organised by Belnet through the annual FedWAN Day. During this event, Belnet provides an update on the technical, organisational and financial aspects of the FedWAN project. "Furthermore, we can also indicate what wishes we have as users. For example, we submitted a request to Belnet for a dashboard that could give us insight into the status of all lines. We know they have all this information available. Belnet quickly responded to our request and we understand they are now working to make this information accessible to users." 

De Groote and Fouquaert thus look back on a migration that went well and brought several benefits to the FPS Mobility. "The Federal Council of Ministers' decision to launch FedWAN has proven to be the right one. We have uniformity, a single point of contact and a partner that takes a lot of work off our hands and our fellow services," Fouquaert emphasises.