HONG KONG -- 2 March 2000 -- Cisco Systems Capital Corporation (CSC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco Systems, and Diyixian.com, a leading corporate ISP in Greater China, today entered an innovative equipment financing agreement that will fuel Diyixian.com's ambitious network infrastructure build-up in the region.
With CSC financing among other sources, Diyixian.com plans to eventually spend over HK$1 Billion (US$129M) to build next generation IP broadband network in Greater China over the next 3 years.
Once completed, Diyixian.com's network will be the first IP broadband network across Greater China for Internet Content Providers (ICPs), online traders, multimedia Web content users as well as corporate Intranet/Extranet users. Under the agreement, CSC will enable Diyixian.com to deploy the latest Cisco equipment to expand, upgrade and maintain its networking infrastructure. Cisco will also provide professional consulting and network integration services.
"Diyixian.com will be a first for Cisco Capital in Greater China, as we are providing significant financing for a dotcom start-up on the back of a business plan," said Daniel Brotman, regional director for CSC in Asia-Pacific and Japan. "This is structured in a way not dissimilar to many venture capital arrangements, where we provide financing to a new startup with a sound business idea, promising market fundamentals and forward-looking management. The difference is that instead of taking a direct equity interest, Cisco is providing a loan with a right to purchase equity in the company at a later stage."
Lap Man, CEO of Diyixian.com, said: "We selected Cisco as our strategic partner because its intelligent networking solutions can help relieve Internet congestion and bandwidth limitation in Greater China. This is in line with Diyixian.com's commitment to building the next generation IP broadband network to meet the mission-critical applications of our customers. Partnering with this recognized global networking giant not only greatly consolidates our leading position in delivering the highest quality services in Greater China market today, but also enhances our network consistency and performance, and consequently reinforces our capability to offer advanced and sophisticated broadband access and IP SONET network to meet the upward-spiraling demand of our customers."
The large-scale network rollout plan, to be completely based on Cisco equipment, comprises several phases over the next 3 years, culminating in the completion of 30 POPs (Point of Presence) in the whole Greater China region. The first phase build out will include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen and Taipei, as well as establishing a second data center in Hong Kong by Q2 2000. Diyixian.com's carrier-grade network backbone will deploy a full array of Cisco GSR 12000 series backbone routers adept at handling multiple OC-48 circuits, together with Cisco IGX WAN switches and Catalyst 6500 series LAN switches.
Diyixian.com will deliver superb multi-service capabilities, including broadband access services across the network. The connection of hundreds of T1/T3/OC-3 to Cisco IGX WAN Switches and the adoption of numerous Cisco 5300 remote access routers will enable Diyixian.com to handle over 10,000 corporate customers and tens of thousands of modem dial-up/ISDN ports simultaneously with high density, guaranteed redundancy, scalability and reliability. Diyixian.com will also leverage Cisco's cable modem, xDSL, LMDS and Ethernet switch technologies to implement other broadband build-out strategies in the entire Greater China region.
"Powered by Cisco equipment, our Greater China network not only enables voice, data, video and graphics integration and content distribution at an unparalleled speed, but also facilitates global and local load balancing, caching and mirroring over the network. All these would definitely provide unprecedented performance with unmatched reliability, security and scalability, and position Diyixian.com as the pioneer corporate ISP in Greater China," said Lap Man.
About Diyixian.com
Diyixian.com is the first and leading Internet Service Provider in Greater China, offering total Internet solutions including Dedicated Internet Access, Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Server Co-location to corporate customers. It operates one of the largest networks in Greater China with more than 12 Points-of Presence (POPS), over 30Mbps ATM/Frame Relay-based Internet backbone to China and Taiwan, multiple OC-3 (155Mbps) to Hong Kong Tier-1 providers, and 2xSTM-1(155Mbps) to HKIX. In addition, with its expertise and professional customer support, Diyixian.com is committed to providing a high speed, secure and reliable Internet connection for businesses, with full peering into all ISPs in HK, over 40Mbps direct peering to Chinanet, CERNet, Jitong, Unicom, HiNet, SeedNet and TWIX (Taiwan Internet Exchanges). More information about Diyixian.com is available at http://www.diyixian.com.
About Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco news and information are available at http://www.cisco.com.
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