ITU TELECOM AFRICA, Cairo and ZURICH, Switzerland, May 4, 2004 - Cisco Systems® today announced that Swisscom/Bluewin is offering a network-based stateful per-user firewall service for individual broadband subscribers using Cisco 7301 Series routers and Cisco IOS® Firewall software. The new easy-to-use broadband security service - available on a monthly subscription basis - helps Bluewin's residential and office broadband users secure their Internet connections, removing the need to purchase, install and manage their own PC or server-based firewall protection.

Cisco worked with Bluewin to develop the service, which answers the service provider's requirements for a robust, centrally managed and provisioned security feature that can be used simply and easily by a broad range of subscribers. Depending on how they use the Internet, customers can choose one of three pre-defined security profiles.

"Some subscribers may be comfortable installing, configuring and supporting their own hardware or PC-based firewalls, but what we have found is that there is an important group of customers who prefer the ease and simplicity of a centrally-managed service that can be activated for a fixed fee." said Thomas Gwerder, member of the management, Bluewin. "Cisco has been able to work with us to come up with a pragmatic solution, both from the customers' perspective and from ours."

The stateful per-user firewall runs on the Cisco 7301 Series routers that serve as termination points for the broadband connections from customers' premises. This means that unlike hardware- or software-based firewalls on customers' PCs, Bluewin can deploy and manage the firewall remotely.

"This deployment demonstrates our continuing commitment to work with service providers to develop and deploy new, revenue-generating broadband services using the intelligence of their existing infrastructure," commented Geraint Anderson, VP, sales and marketing, Incumbent Service Providers, for Cisco Systems EMEA. "At a time of increasing concern over Internet security, there is a clear business case for service providers to offer a robust, network-based firewall service that can be delivered quickly and easily to individual customers."

While Bluewin's stateful per-user firewall service is based on Cisco IOS® Firewall and Cisco 7301 Series routers, Bluewin has deployed a number of other Cisco technologies across its network as well, including Cisco 7200 Series routers, Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series switches and Cisco AS5800 Series universal gateways.

About Bluewin

Bluewin counts more than 940000 active access customers (December 2003), 273000 of which are broadband customers (December 2003), and 120 million page views per month. The 100 percent Swisscom subsidiary has been offering a comprehensive Internet service for private and small office/home office customers for over seven years.