Telstra to Improve Australian Net Infrastructure

In the latest of a series of moves by the Australian telecommunications carrier, Telstra has
chosen four networking vendors to upgrade different parts of Australia’s
Internet and telephony infrastructure, in a project called Data Mode of
Operation (DMO), at a cost running up to billions of dollars.

Telstra chose Nortel Networks and Lucent as the primary providers of
hardware and software for its core networks, with Alcatel providing
services, and selected a team of Alcatel and Cisco Systems to build an
Internet telephony platform for what the carrier calls its “voice on Net”
strategy.

The biggest surprise in the DMO announcement, which followed more than a
year of intense lobbying by suppliers, was the relatively small part that
local market leader Cisco had been given.

A figure on the cost of the entire five-year project was not given, but
Nortel said its part of the deal was potentially worth up to AUS$1 billion
(US$650 million).

Nortel will provide installation and support to a new IP-based network running on frame relay and ATM through its
Asia-Pacific hub in Melbourne, while Lucent will add an updated dial-up
gateway.

“This project signals a transition to Telstra being a globally significant,
full-service, 21st century company with a converged IP core network
integrating telephony, data, Internet and multimedia services to our
customers,” said Gerry Moriarty, MD for Telstra’s network and technology
group.