[London, ENGLAND] Nortel
Networks
announced Friday a contract with Finnish communications provider
Sonera to bring advanced
optical technology to long haul networks in Finland and Russia.
The deal will enable Sonera to offer a greater range of services
including Voice over IP (VoIP) by greatly increasing the available
bandwidth using dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) technology.
Pascal Debon, president, Service Providers Solutions, Europe, at
Nortel Networks, said that service providers the world over now
realize the importance of introducing new services and applications
which can only be enabled through additional bandwidth.
The deal with Sonera would position the Finnish company to
provide “a significantly greater level of fast, reliable,
high-bandwidth services to Finland and into Russia and the
rest of Europe,” said Debon.
Sonera’s Tuomo Kokkila said that the Sonera network offered
a unique gateway between east and west, enabling European
and U.S. operators to continue their connections from Central
Europe to the Nordic countries and Russia.
Internet infrastructure is significantly less well developed
in Russia than elsewhere in Europe, but it can clearly
benefit from the advanced state of the industry in Finland.
Last week, Tuomo Kokkila, vice president of Sonera Carrier
Networks’ International Sales, explained how the network
was being extensively upgraded.
“We are extending our network to the nodes of Central Europe
and the USA, such as London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and New York.
Sonera already uses DWDM technology in Finland. In the course
of this year, we will expand the DWDM-based network from Finland,
via Sweden and Denmark, to Central Europe — and in the east,
the network will extend all the way to Russia.”
In 1999, Sonera made nearly half a billion dollars profit before
tax, on turnover of $1.75 billion.