BEIJING, P.R. China, December 10, 2001 - ChinaNet, a subsidiary of China Telecom and China's largest Internet access provider, has announced that it has increased the capacity of its backbone network to speeds of 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) using Cisco's STM-64/OC-192C line cards with its existing Cisco12000 Series Internet Routers. ChinaNet's newly enhanced backbone underscores China's commitment to building a state-of-the-art-network with capacities that rival those in the world's most advanced information technology economies. By deploying the market-leading 12400 Internet Routers in its IP backbone China Net is able to deliver high value services such as IP VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), voice over IP (VOIP), and video on demand to its growing customer base.

This achievement also confirms China Telecom's position as China's leading fixed-line telecom operator, and places it among the world's most technologically advanced telecommunication companies. As the leading player in China's telecom industry, China Telecom is committed to becoming a large-scale, internationally competitive corporation.

This enhancement to ChinaNet, China's largest Internet network, provides a 4-fold bandwidth increase compared with the previous 2.5 Gbps network rate, and a 5,000-fold increase over the original 2 megabits per second (Mbps) preliminary structure of China's Internet.

"ChinaTelecom's construction of China's first commercial OC-192 IP backbone is critical to the delivery of high-value services to China's fast growing base of customers," said Roland Acra, group vice president and general manager, Cisco's Internet Routing Group. "One of the ways that we helped reduce China Telecom's upgrade costs was though a simple field upgrade of their existing Cisco 12016 routers to support our 10Gbps OC-192/STM-64 line cards. The Cisco 12016 and all of our 12400 products utilize a modular, upgradable switch fabric, making Cisco the only major routing vendor to deliver this key investment protection capability."

Acra continued, "Cisco has established a solid foundation of cooperation with China Telecom over the years, by providing quality service and state-of-the-art products and helping ChinaNet to become one of the world's largest and most advanced global Internet network access providers."

The Cisco 12000 Series Internet Router is part of Cisco's family of multimillion packets-per-second (pps) Internet routing platforms for creating a full service Internet. The Cisco 12000 Series is the premier Internet routing platform for service provider backbone and high-speed edge applications and enables service providers to meet the challenge of building IP networks to satisfy customer demands while increasing profitability. The Cisco 12000 Series offers the only portfolio of 10 Gbps OC-192/STM-64 systems with the capacity, performance, service enablers, and operational efficiencies to build the most competitive IP networks. With its unique, modular distributed system architecture, the Cisco 12000 Series leads the industry with the only proven investment protection, the highest backbone and edge performance, and the only guaranteed priority packet delivery.