Pacific Internet Inks Deal With NEC

Pacific Internet has signed a strategic deal with NEC to deliver a new business grade broadband digital subscriber line (DSL) service over NEC’s NEXTEP network in Australia, the second-largest network on the east coast covering the main metropolitan areas in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Through this, Pacific Internet aims to improve network availability and reliability of DSL for the business market. And for the first time, it will be able to offer its broadband DSL customers service level agreements (SLAs) for network uptime.

The partnership with NEC also paves the way for the service provider to
deliver a range of new business services including Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), e-commerce, Voice over IP (VoIP), media streaming, video-on-demand and data convergence over broadband DSL.

According to Dennis Muscat, managing director of Pacific Internet Australia, broadband DSL technology offers significant price and performance advantages over leased lines, Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), or Frame Relay but issues with poor reliability have left many businesses reluctant to switch.

He added that Pacific Internet’s Premium Business DSL will offer the reliability of traditional ISDN and Frame Relay that businesses demand, but at a fraction of the price and with faster throughput, with speeds up to 6 megabits per second (Mbps).

The first services under the Premium Business DSL will be launched in June 2002.