The BBC have taken what they believe to be an important step in their bid to get better value from their IT contracts by offering a £230 million contract for someone to manage their ‘connectivity services.’ The winner of the contract will have to provide the the “interconnections” that support the Beeb’s IT networks and broadcast signal kit.

The contract is being offered as part of the BBC’s move away from monolithic single supplier deals – the state broadcaster has spent billions on IT over the past decade. The “connectivity services” deal is one of seven new contracts to replace their previous mega-deal with Atos.

Delays in rolling out the new contracts have already cost the BBC £285 million.

They seem confident that the telly tax booty will keep rolling in..

Update: A nice man from the BBC has written in to complain that the line “Delays in rolling out the new contracts have already cost the BBC £285 million” is misleading as the £285 million they bunged Atos was a “significant saving on what we otherwise would have been spending.” Techno is happy to clarify that the £285 million of telly tax booty the Beeb was forced to shell out after they cocked up their introduction of a ‘tower model’ for their tech framework was indeed less then they would have been paying under their previous £2 billion contract with ASOS.