Cable & Wireless to Upgrade French Backbone

[London, ENGLAND] Global communications company
Cable & Wireless announced Tuesday that it has
awarded a contract to Juniper Networks to supply
M-series Internet backbone routers to its French
operation.

The new IP-optimized routers from Juniper Networks
are intended to increase the capacity, reliability
and efficiency of the Cable & Wireless en France
core infrastructure. The improvements are expected
to meet the increased demand for services — and
what C&W calls “increasingly sophisticated
customer requirements.”

“Equipment of this type makes a significant contribution
in our aim to provide an Internet backbone that is
easier to manage, more reliable and has far greater
capacity, whilst enabling us to deploy innovative new
services,” said Sofiane Ammarm, chief technical
officer at Cable & Wireless en France.

Ammar went on to say that customers would benefit
from lower operating costs, network stability and
high quality Internet transit availability.

Cable & Wireless now ranks as one of the world’s
top five ISPs and is deeply committed to improving
its global infrastructure. The company is currently
spending over US $3 billion to enhance this
infrastructure, adding capacity to its AS3561
Internet backbone and its hubs in the U.S., Europe,
Japan and Australia.

Cable & Wireless has not published exact figures
for the value of the Juniper deal, but the contract
is said to be worth several million dollars.

“Our purpose-built IP-optimized routers represent the
latest in core network routing technology; delivering
performance without compromise and enabling services
at speeds never seen before,” said Tony Morrish, operations
director Europe, Middle East and Africa, at Juniper Networks.

For the year to end March 2000, Cable & Wireless
had revenues of over US $14 billion and customers in 70
countries.