CAPE YORK PENINSULA, Australia - June 17, 2003 - Cisco Systems, Inc., has provided networking equipment to the Outback Digital Network, Ltd. (ODN) to service the communications needs of communities in remote northern Australia. ODN is a service provider, formed by Indigenous Australian organisations, to provide high-speed Internet access, voice and video services based on Internet Protocol (IP) to remote communities across northern Australia.

The ODN service area will span 1.5 million square kilometres across northern Australia, including Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. There are five subsidiary networks which together form the ODN. The first ODN member to establish points of presence (POPs) is the Cape York Digital Network (CYDN).

When rollout is complete on 31 August, CYDN will provide 16 remote Aboriginal communities across the Cape York Peninsula in far-north Queensland with access to Internet-based communications. This access will be provided by a network based on a series of Cisco® 2600 Series routers, and Cisco Aironet® 350 Series access points and wireless bridges.

The Cisco 2600 Series core router was chosen by the ODN because of its versatility. It allows customers to consolidate data, voice and video traffic to reduce operating expenses, deploy new business applications and improve network efficiency.

ODN Chairman Kevin Fong said; "All of the communities are very isolated and the only way to solve this is with a reliable communications network. Having the best-available digital infrastructure and a future-proof network based on IP is the key to building our local economy and educating our kids for the future.

ODN National Project Manager, Philip Dutchak, said; "This is an extreme environment and we chose robust equipment from Cisco because it is reliable and capable of catering to increasing demand in the future."

John Winters, Cisco Queensland manager, said; "The creation of the ODN will help to provide remote Australian communities with access to the same kind of high speed Internet access that urban Australia takes for granted. Cisco is excited to be working with ODN."

As a part of this project, Cisco will also provide training and establish a testing laboratory in Cairns. The new test lab will be the first one outside a state capital in Australia.

The Cape York network was designed and built by ODN partner, Network Design and Construction Limited (NDC).