Ericsson wins 30m Euro ERION optical networking contract with Belgacom

Ericsson wins 30m Euro ERION optical networking contract with Belgacom Ericsson will provide Belgacom, the largest Belgian operator, with nationwide DWDM infrastructure for inter-city links. Under a three year frame contract worth 30m Euro, Ericsson will support the implemention and maintenance of the network. The new network, based on Ericsson's ERION optical networking solutions, will support the nationwide Belgian backbone, providing significantly greater capacity to meet the demands of an increasing number of services. Initially, Ericsson will implement 17 links between large cities with high traffic concentration. The contract includes the supply, implementation and 10 years of hardware and software support. These will enable a drastic capacity increase in the current network from currently a single channel to 32 channels each capable of carrying up to 10 Gigabits of mixed traffic types such as Internet, IP, SDH, ATM and Gigabit Ethernet. "This contract is important for the expansion of our backbone network to cater for future growth. We intend to deliver more diverse, faster and more reliable services using Ericsson's DWDM solutions," said Johan Luystermans, Director Technology and Process Management, Belgacom. "This is a strategic contract for Ericsson, both in the Belgian market and for our ERION family of optical networking solutions. Our solution provides high flexibility, is scalable to meet the expected growth in the Belgian communications market and is ready for the carrying of backbone services such as Internet and Mobile Internet. The important issues for such solutions are reliability, scalability and manageability. And these are all areas in which Ericsson excels," said Dominique Jodoin, President of Ericsson Belgium. "Like many countries, Belgium is facing an explosion of Internet access and is planning for unprecedented traffic growth as the Mobile Internet becomes a reality. This is putting exceptional pressure on backbone transport networks such as Belgacom's. By boosting the network capacity, Ericsson's platform guarantees Internet communication of the highest standard," said Peter Desmet, Account Manager, Ericsson Belgium. Ericsson is the leading communications supplier, combining innovation in mobility and Internet in creating the new era of Mobile Internet. Ericsson provides total solutions covering everything from systems and applications to mobile phones and other communications tools. With more than 100,000 employees in 140 countries, Ericsson simplifies communications for customers all over the world. Read more at http://www.ericsson.com/pressroom FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT Véronique Lenne, Communications Manager Ericsson nv/sa Phone: +32 2 745 1306 E-mail: veronique.lenne@ebr.ericsson.se Paula Angel-Jones, Director Public Relations Data Backbone and Optical Networks. Phone: +1 781 505 6245 E-mail: paula.angel-jones@ericsson.com About ERION The ERION carrier-class optical transport products from Ericsson are based on DWDM technology - the key optical networking technology that maximizes the capacity of fiber networks. The ERION optical networking solution provides a flexible, scalable, managed optical network, with the built-in traffic protection, reducing costs for bandwidth provision in long haul metropolitan core and access transport network architectures. ERION Linear is a trunk network solution, which offers an economical architecture optimized to meet the needs of the emerging data-centric long haul optical networking applications, with an open architecture. ERION Metro is designed for metro access networks with circumferences of up to 100km. ERION FlexRing supports both hub and meshed wide area networks topologies and is optimized for ring circumferences of up to 500km. Over 1000 ERION systems are installed throughout the world for applications including IP, CATV, Gigabit Ethernet and SDH/SONET. To learn more about Ericsson's suite of IP, data and optical networks, please visit http://www.ericsson.com/datacom