SHANGHAI, China -- February 23, 1999 -- The Guangxi Post and Telecommunications Administration (GXPTA), one of China's largest telecommunications service providers, announced that it has chosen advanced solutions from Cisco Systems to build an innovative IP over ATM (Internet Protocol over Asynchronous Transfer Mode) network in China.
The new equipment will enable the GXPTA to offer their customers a host of voice, video and data services across a single telecommunications link. Using a mix of Cisco's latest BPX. 8600 Series ATM edge switches and state-of-the-art Cisco IOS. network management software, the GXPTA's new architecture will enable them to tailor services to meet specific customer needs and differentiate their service offering from their competitors.
"The rapid pace of China's telecommunications development has allowed the country to leapfrog many of the intermediate stages that other more 'advanced' markets have faced," said Duh Jiabin, managing director at Cisco. "The Chinese telecom professionals are intensely aware of the benefits of the new technologies such as multiservice IP+ATM, and are committed to rapidly implementing these technologies into a variety of new service offerings for their customer base."
"We are delighted to be partners with Cisco in developing our network," said Lin MianYue, chief engineer of GXPTA. "It will enable us to achieve substantial operational savings compared to the traditional circuit-switched network architecture."
Cisco's BPX solutions are standards-based ATM switches that support broadband, IP, and broadband/narrowband service delivery. These solutions are designed to provide carrier-class network backbones for service provider environments.
The BPX 8600 Series offers a full range of user interfaces and scales up to OC-12/STM-4 (622 Mbps), enabling the GXPTA to deliver a wide range of data, video, Internet, LAN, virtual private network (VPN) and Systems Network Architecture (SNA) services. In addition, intelligent Quality of Service (QoS) management features provide the flexibility to customize service offerings, adding value to basic data services which can support higher margins and generate greater revenues.
"The BPX 8600 series was developed with one thought in mind, to provide service providers with unbeatable flexibility in deploying wide-area, backbone ATM networks," said Julie Tiao, director of Cisco's service provider division. "A choice of configurations within the BPX 8600 series enables delivery of best-in-class, revenue-generating ATM or IP services, or both, from a single platform. For GXPTA, that means freedom to offer a broad range of services, tailored to the needs of its customers."
With more than 20,000 employees, GXPTA is one of China Telecom's largest revenue generators with approximately US$350 million in annual sales. The organization offers a variety of services to their customers, including traditional fixed line voice services, GSM cellular connectivity as well as digital data networking and Digital Microwave. Now, with its IP+ATM initiative, the organization will be able to offer many of these services over a single platform, allowing customers to select and expand the telecommunications services they require, as they need it.
"As one of the first Post and Telecommunications Administration's (PTA) in China to move towards a packet data architecture, Guangxi PTA is on the leading edge of today's revolution in packet switching," said Tiao. "We believe their new network strategy will be extremely cost efficient and look forward to assisting the organizations with its transition from circuit to packet switching."
Once the installation of the Cisco equipment at GXPTA is achieved, the organization will begin offering a new range of services to its customers to coincide with its 40th anniversary in December.
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