[Sydney, AUSTRALIA] A consortium of financial institutions led by J.P. Morgan, AGL and AMP Asset Management today announced the
closing of a total $175 million equity raising in what they claim will be
Australia’s first national IP-based wholesale carrier, COMindico Holdings
Pty Ltd.
The startup funding was sourced from investors including Queensland Press;
Kerry Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings Group; and Wayne Passlow, the
company9s founder and CEO of Open Telecommunications.
Cisco Systems is to play a major role in the development of COMindico’s
network and to provide vendor financing, which in conjunction with the
equity funds raised, will be used to roll out the national IP-based carrier
network. Open Telecommunications will be responsible for the design,
architecture, integration and provisioning of enabling software for the
network.
COMindico will act as an independent wholesale supplier of integrated data
and voice telephony services. The network will use multi protocol label
switching (MPLS). Sixty-six PoPs are planned to correspond to each of
Telstra’s 66 call collection areas nationwide.
A “content aware” network is planned in an attempt to ensure that voice
calls are delivered to
the standard of conventional telephone carriers. The network will be
deployed in two phases, the
first of which will commence operations in October, with the entire network
to be operational by early 2001.