Telecom Lead Asia: Cisco has been selected by NBN Co to provide equipment for its national data connectivity network.
Set up by the Australian federal government, NBN Co will design, build and operate Australia’s wholesale-only, broadband network.
“This has been an important project for both organizations and has enabled industry-leading data centre capabilities for NBN Co’s significant scale and flexibility requirements,” said Sam Gerner, director of Service Provider and Cloud for Cisco Australia and New Zealand.
Recently, Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei did not permission to participate in NBN projects due to security issues. Cisco competes with
Cisco will supply Multi-Protocol Layer Switching on Cisco routers and firewalls to support NBN Co’s National Connectivity Network (NCN) in a deal estimated to be worth up to $38 million over five years.
The Cisco intelligent network technology will be deployed in NBN Co’s depot, aggregation nodes and other key locations and will support the Operations Support System and Business Support System platforms, signaling and timing.
NCN will play a key role in activating and assuring services as homes and businesses across Australia connect onto the NBN. Cisco will commence work on the five-year project immediately.
This equipment will enable communication between NBN Co’s centralized operational staff and IT systems with the fiber, fixed wireless and satellite equipment situated at various locations across Australia.
“The remote control of this equipment, via the NCN, will allow new services to be activated and faults to be diagnosed and repaired quickly and efficiently across Australia,” said Tony Cross, executive general manager of Network Architecture and Technology, NBN Co.
Cisco’s expanding its role in the development of the NBN. In late 2010, a consortium led by Cisco was awarded the contract to provide NBN Co with a data centre platform.
Together with its technology partners EMC and VMware, Cisco was commissioned to build a scalable platform to run essential applications, including network management, inventory management, customer care, billing, service provisioning and fulfillment systems, as well as a web portal to support customer self-service and the corporate website.
