Cisco Metro Ethernet Summit, Vienna, June 4, 2003 - Cisco Systems today announced that MKB Fastighets AB, a real-estate management company owned by the City of Malmo in Sweden, has selected Cisco's Metro Ethernet Switching technology to build a fibre-based broadband network to connect 20,000 apartments. Cisco, Imagine Broadband and Dimension Data have worked together with MKB to build an Equal Access infrastructure, which will help provide MKB's tenants with 10 Mbit/s fibre-based Ethernet broadband for high-speed connectivity and the ability to select services from multiple providers.

MKB wanted to build its own high-speed broadband network to offer its tenants a choice of data, voice and video services from various service providers to its tenants. MKB also wanted to streamline offering its own services, such as online booking of tenants facilities, management of fire, burglar and safety alarms and electronic communication with tenants in a round the clock way, and without tenants needing to sign up for commercial services.

'MKB is one of the largest real estate companies in southern Sweden and plans to offer true Ethernet broadband services over an Equal Access infrastructure that will help allow MKB's customers to choose services from several providers,' commented Sven Brandrup, project director of MKB's Broadband division. 'As we are building a network that will ultimately deliver voice and video services to our end customers, we needed technology that would support Quality of Service effectively throughout our network. Cisco technology was the obvious choice.'

"Customers can now select the services they wish to purchase from various providers without necessarily needing human intervention to activate the service," commented Michael Bayer, director of SP marketing, Cisco Systems, EMEA. "This self-provisioning over the network will help to reduce the ongoing operational cost of the network both for MKB and for the service providers who deliver services over it."

"MKB selected an integrated solution from Dimension Data that offered a single point of contact for building the Cisco-based Ethernet over fibre network as well as integrating the Equal Access service provisioning, service creation and IP management platforms in tandem with Imagine and Cisco," commented Mats Germundsson, general manager of Dimension Data Sweden.

MKB recognised the benefits to citizens in Malmo of building out an infrastructure that would both reduce the ongoing operating costs of interacting with tenants, helping provide lifestyle and productivity benefits, and opening up access to relevant local information and content. Tenants in MKB apartments now potentially have access to teleworking capabilities that can mirror access speeds in the office as a result of the new network.

"As individual tenants' requirements differ, MKB recognised a need not just to provide next-generation broadband, but to provide its tenants with a choice," commented Nick Coombes, Alliance Director for Imagine Broadband. "As a result of our close work with Dimension Data and Cisco, MKB is now able to create and deploy services rapidly on the network without the additional need for extensive systems integration work."

The MKB network is based around the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switch in the core and aggregation layer of the network, which connect over the fibre network to Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series switches in the basement of apartment blocks. The Imagine Broadband OSS system used to support the Equal Access solution is based on Imagine OSS, Cisco Network Registrar and Cisco Works.