Ericsson wins $US230m Telstra network upgrade

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 19 October 2006 18:18

Business IT - Networking

Ericsson has won a contract from Telstra worth more than $US230 million to upgrade Telstra's inter-capital, regional and rural optical and microwave radio transport networks.

According to Ericsson, the upgrade will provide significant capacity expansions up to 10Gbps between Telstra's core network routers through the use of optical and microwave radio technology. "The upgraded capacity in Telstra's network will improve consumer access to high speed internet, video conferencing, music on demand and video streaming," Ericsson says.

Ericsson winning the contract owes much to its acquisition of Marconi last year. Telstra has used Marconi optical transmission technology in its network for over a decade. However Telstra announced three years ago that it would be upgrading inter-capital capacity to 10Gbps.

In May 2003 Marconi and Siemens were named as the preferred suppliers for future upgrades of Telstra's trunk, regional and metropolitan backbone networks from 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps operation under three year frame agreements said to be worth up to $300 million in total. For eight years prior to this, Siemens had been supplying Marconi's 2.5Gbps optical gear to Telstra.

In mid 2004 Marconi was named preferred supplier of 2.5Gbps optical technology for future network rollouts. Telstra explained the relationship between the two contracts by saying: "The prime purpose of the previous [2003] Marconi/Siemens 10Gbps [preferred supplier] agreements was to establish a 10Gbps DWDM inter-capital infrastructure between Perth - Adelaide - Melbourne - Sydney - Brisbane and provide the associated 10Gbps SDH/WDM core optical distribution networks at these inter-capital centres. These would then link to the metro/access/country network sub-layers which will primarily utilise the lower order 2.5Gbps SDH/WDM optical technology which is the subject of this recent [004] lower order 2.5Gbps SDH/WDM sourcing agreement awarded to Marconi."