Wellington Benefits from 10 Gigabit

MEDIA RELEASE
11 October 2006

Wellington Benefits from 10 Gigabit

TelstraClear has just completed a major upgrade of its Wellington metropolitan network and its Auckland-Wellington junction network.

The networks have been upgraded to 10 Gigabit, following a similar upgrade to the Auckland network last year. The junction upgrade enables the connection of additional high bandwidth services between the two cities, meaning customers can transfer more data between them.

TelstraClear Chief Operating Officer Luigi Sorbello says the Wellington project is the latest in the company’s ongoing programme of New Zealand investment.

“This is a major investment in infrastructure for our corporate market and follows a $14 million project last year to extend the North Island 10 Gigabit network into Auckland. These form part of our investment plan of more than $100 million a year in network enhancement and expansion. It lays a strong foundation for a further five years’ growth of high bandwidth services in the North Island.”

Increasing the capacity of the network from 1 Gigabit to 10 Gigabits enables customers to quickly and efficiently send large amounts of data from the Auckland network to the Wellington network for business requirements such as data backups and multimedia applications. Customers will be able to use further data intensive and complex applications that create, manipulate and transfer large files on the network.

Mr Sorbello says that the upgrade was essential to cater for increased demand and means Wellington businesses will be able to run storage area networks to the TelstraClear Albany data centre. It also increases capacity on the network for additional customers.

“There has been significant growth in storage area networks spanning cities, fuelled also by Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. As a result we’re seeing a significant leap in traffic between the two cities for many of our large customers.”

“We already doubled capacity on the Wellington ring in 2004 by creating a link-bonded dual Gigabit ring, however growth is such that a mere doubling in capacity of the Wellington ring is not enough,” he says.

Ericsson provides system integration, implementation and support for the system upgrades, which uses Extreme Networks BlackDiamond 10808 Ethernet switches in the Wellington network and Juniper M320 core routers in the national core junction network.

Ericsson General Manager Steve Inglis says Ericsson is thrilled to be able to support TelstraClear in rolling out such superior service in New Zealand.

"Ericsson is a leader in system integration and service delivery solutions and is the driving force for converged broadband IP network solutions.

We're proud to bring these market leading products to TelstraClear and its customers."

ENDS

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