Re: Cisco and BT
>> Cisco Looks To Strengthen Ties With Bt Ignite Deal
Simon Marshall
Total Telecom
07 November 2000
BT's broadband arm Ignite has paid US$300 million for Cisco Systems equipment to boost its pan-European Colossus backbone capacity.
The U.K. firm is also in talks to extend the contract to include optical switching equipment and other regions.
The Cisco routers and interconnects will grow the U.K. leg of the network from 50 Gbps to 250 Gbps to support the growth in IP-based traffic coming from VPNs and content distribution networks.
However, Mark Kummer, BT operations director at Cisco, told Total Telecom that BT was likely to need a further boost after this first-phase two-year contract.
"We're doing an [optical switching] trial with them now, and as demand goes up, they've accepted that within five years all traffic will be IP and not TDM-based," he said. "At some point, they'll need to replace their core with the latest generation of products like the ones made from our Monterey acquisition to provide an optical switched network."
"This is something they know makes sense, and it's something that's being discussed," he added.
According to Kummer, BT made a strategic decision about 12 months ago to build up its IP core as its PSTN network came under pressure from an increase in dial-up Internet usage. But today's contract will add further capacity to that build up, so BT can deploy further IP-based services including streaming video and VoIP.
Cisco said BT had about 50,000 kilometers of its Colossus fiber in place across Europe, and today's contract will put the U.K. section under control. Kummer said Cisco was hopeful of being BT's supplier in Europe.
Cisco supplied its GSR1200 and 1600 series routers, 10 Gigabit interconnects, and links to POPs by 10 Gigabit Ethernet connected to a distribution layer and its new Edge Server Node 10000 equipment.
Cisco bought Monterey Networks on 26 August last year.
Separately, BT Ignite said it had embarked on trials to provide a VoIP service to the internal organization of the U.K.'s OpenTV. <<
- Eric - |
