[London, ENGLAND] Cisco, in the news this week for a rare
failure to meet profit and revenue targets, announced
Wednesday that Ebone will provide connectivity to support its
European network services.
Ebone, a division of Global TeleSystems, Inc., has 1 terabit
of capacity on its optical Internet backbone in Europe,
and serves a quarter of all European Internet users.
Network equipment manufacturer Cisco says it will
connect via the Amsterdam City Enterprise Network
(CEN), a metropolitan fiber ring recently opened by Ebone.
The ring provides major business centers in Amsterdam with
broadband Internet access over 2.5 gigabits.
Leo McCloskey, Ebone’s senior vice president, marketing, spoke
of quality, reliability and reach as being three key factors
that persuaded Cisco to sign with Ebone.
Patrick Braun, vice president, operations, at Cisco Systems
EMEA, said Ebone’s scalable, secure solution would enable
Cisco to expand its IP connectivity with speed and reliability.
“With over 80 percent of Cisco sales being conducted over
the Internet we recognize the need for a reliable service
with which to expand our IP based technology business,”
said Braun.
Ebone’s fiber network reaches nearly all major European
cities, extending to approximately 20,000 kilometers. It
connects to North America via a trans-Atlantic fiber pair
owned by Ebone and expected to become operational in the
first half of 2001 with an initial 80 Gbps of capacity.
It has been a rollercoaster week for Cisco, on Sunday
judged the best employer in the U.K. by a leading newspaper,
only to see its shares fall 10 percent on news that third
quarter sales would be lower than expected.
The deal with Ebone will remind investors that Cisco has
the capacity in Europe to cope with an up-turn in sales,
if and when it comes.
