PODGORICA, Montenegro -- Cisco Systems, and Telekom Crne Gore, Montenegro's leading telecoms operator, have signed an agreement to establish an advanced national communications infrastructure, based on IP and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology. The network, called MIPnet (Montenegrian IP Network), will be used to provision virtual private network (VPN) services to the public and business sector in Montenegro and will be complete by February 2004.

Cisco is working closely with MDS Informaticki Inzenjering, a Cisco Premier Certified Partner, to supply technology infrastructure on the deployment of MIPnet.

The MIPnet infrastructure, will help enable Telekom Crne Gore to provide advanced VPN services to its customers optimized for security, reliability and scalability. Government and businesses of all sizes will have access to a means of connecting up their suppliers, customers, and employees, wherever they are located, using a high availability, highly secure communications network. The IP network will offer high-speed data transmission and thanks to the MPLS core will provide the means to prioritise packet delivery for real-time applications - such as voice and video. The Cisco-based MPLS core will help Telekom Crne Gore efficiently combine multiple services on a common infrastructure, in order to reduce ongoing operational cost and open up possibilities for new revenue-generating services. The MIPnet platform provides a basis Telekom Crne Gore to take advantage of the integration based data, voice, video and messaging to offer additional new services such as IP Telephony and video-based applications in the future.

Milan Perovic, CEO at Telekom Crne Gore, said: "This agreement is very important for us because it enables the fast and easy implementation of new converged services. MIPnet is a multi service network and in today's changed market environment, multiple, converged services is the future for our company."

Cisco Systems Inc.

Telekom Crne Gore

MDS Informaticki Inzenjering