Swisscom Chooses Cisco's CRS-1

BERN, Switzerland -- Cisco Systems® (NASDAQ:CSCO - News) today announced a multi-million dollar contract to transform Swisscom's entire core network to support Ethernet services for business customers and next-generation "Triple Play" (data, video, voice) over broadband services for residential and wholesale customers. Swisscom will deploy Cisco® CRS-1 carrier routing systems operating the carrier-class Cisco IOS® XR software at all core and aggregation points of presence throughout Switzerland interconnected by 10 Gigabit Ethernet wide-area network links.

The Swisscom engineering team designed the implementation of the network transformation project with Cisco to meet Swisscom Fixnet's technical and business requirements, focusing on customer satisfaction and the launch of triple-play services in 2005. The new core network is designed to deliver increased capacity, performance, predictability and continuous operation to allow Swisscom to rapidly bring to market a host of Internet Protocol (IP)-based multimedia services for residential and business customers, such as advanced audio and video telephony services, home entertainment services and high-priority data services. Swisscom aims to achieve an eight-times increase in traffic handling capacity to create a platform capable of handling both fixed and mobile services in the future, as well as scaling to meet the company's growth targets over the next five years.

Patrice Haldemann, Head of Network Development and Operations, Swisscom Fixnet, said, "With more than 40 percent broadband penetration of all households, Switzerland is at the forefront in Europe. The hunger for broadband will continue to grow in this country. Pure Internet access, videoconferencing, video on demand and file sharing (video and photo) are steadily driving access speeds upwards. However, it is Internet Protocol TV and the forthcoming high-definition TV, which will boost the demand for higher bandwidths. Furthermore, fixed-mobile convergence will be another key driver in the coming years."

"Even if future services are not yet fully modelled, one thing is for sure. As a consequence of technological developments, reduction of production costs and the penetration of IP multimedia services, an explosion of bandwidth in the local loop will take place. Our basic network infrastructure will anticipate this demand in terms of capacity, quality of service and reliability. A reliable and high-bandwidth core will be critical for our success. The Cisco CRS-1 will give us the lead in reliability, performance and capacity to deliver media-rich communications and entertainment services to every home and business in Switzerland," Mr. Haldemann added.

"Swisscom is widely recognized in the industry as a technology and business leader," said Michael Ganser, Vice President of the Central and Eastern European region at Cisco Systems. "Swisscom has always taken market-leading decisions on next-generation business, service and technology strategies. This is why Swisscom's decision to build the foundation for its future on Cisco CRS-1 technology is particularly significant. Apart from the CRS-1's record-breaking multi-terabit capacity, we are also proving that the continuous operation and unparalleled scalability of the CRS-1 design offers superb investment protection for next-generation service providers."

Swisscom AG