May 22, 2006 Sydney, Australia -- Silk telecom, a recently formed telecommunications provider, is building a new optical network in Australia using high-capacity networking technology from Nortel. The network supports a new range of high-speed managed services for Silk telecom's enterprise customers in regional Victoria and South Australia.
Silk believes the new 720-Gbit/sec network -- the first of its kind to use Nortel's Common Photonic Layer (CPL) technology in Australia -- will give it the competitive advantage of being first to market with a range of high-bandwidth services and applications that require rapid time-to-market deployment. The Nortel CPL platform will provide the capacity to deliver Silk telecom's products, which include Ethernet, Internet, and voice. The network also supports "grey fiber" and "dark fiber" network expansion, which will ensure Silk telecom has additional bandwidth capacity to support the launch of new services well into the future.
"We needed to rapidly ramp up the capacity of our Victoria regional network to bridge the digital divide between customers in metro and regional areas," says Simon Perkins, chief executive officer, Silk telecom. "With its CPL platform, Nortel has provided us with the flexibility to do this cost-effectively, enabling us to balance the cost of transmission with the bandwidth we need for our regional customers."
Nortel is providing network integration and maintenance services for Silk telecom's optical network from the Nortel Global Services portfolio. This includes network engineering and testing, technical support and repair, and product technical training.
Silk telecom is owned by the global Cheung Kong group and originates from the combination of the telecom interests of three Australian electricity distribution companies: ETSA Utilities, Powercor Australia, and Citipower. The company operates optical telecommunications networks in Adelaide, Melbourne, and regional centers in South Australia and Victoria. It also has an established network presence in Darwin.