[Sydney, AUSTRALIA] Davnet has expanded its network to provide more capacity for the high-volume corporate market. The telco has added five Cisco gigabit ethernet routers, allowing it to offer up to one gigabit per second to its data customers. The service will compete with Telstra‘s recently launched EpiCentre offering, also built in conjunction with Cisco, which will also offer up to 1 gbps to the corporate sector.
Telstra announced the service would be marketed jointly by the two companies as a Cisco Powered Network. Davnet claims its Cisco equipment purchase has “made the company’s 100 percent IP-based network the country’s largest Gigabit Ethernet Cisco Powered Network.”
Davnet claimed that Telstra has followed it into the market over a year after the junior telco’s initial rollout. “We are without a doubt the leader in this market,” said Davnet CEO Jason Ashton. “Telstra’s announcement that they are going to deploy this technology is a clear endorsement of our technical
direction.”
“We have been delivering commercial services over ‘GigE’ for more than a year and our existing building licence agreements allow us to easily provision these services,” he added.
While Telstra is already offering its customers integrated VoIP services, Davnet’s “full earlier-grade voice service” will not be available until Q4 2000. It will interconnect with traditional carrier networks but will be delivered through the customer’s ethernet connection.
The network will support other applications such as video conferencing. “Customers are able to obtain extra bandwidth at a few hours notice, allowing them to cost effectively manage their network requirements,” a Davnet representative said, “customers can also prioritize one application, such as videoconferencing, over another to ensure optimum performance.”
