MUNICH, Germany and SAN JOSE, Calif., July 18, 2005 Cisco Systems today announced that T-Com, the fixed-network unit of Deutsche Telekom is extending one of Europe's largest Cisco IP-Next-Generation Networks based on IP/Multiprotocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) by a planned upgrade of its existing Cisco 12000 Series routers.

The project will help provide T-Com's customers access to new carrier services based on IP / MPLS.

T-Com's close cooperation with Cisco Systems in developing Carriers' Carrier functionality helped to shape an industry standards-based solution. The benefit for T Com's customers is a fully redundant 'any-to-any' virtual backbone service, which helps deliver high availability, combined with Quality of Service.

T-Com is working with Cisco to help deliver a significant deployment of the latest generation Cisco IP Service Engines (ISE) interface cards to Cisco 12000 Series routers across its edge layer. This will help enable T Com to reduce its operational expenditure through simplification of its network architecture, and provide a platform for the deployment of Cisco IOS XR.

All T-Com points of presence (PoPs) offer customers a combination of high-speed leased line and DSL connections, based on ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) as well as Ethernet access, together with tiered class-of-service offerings and strong service-level guarantees to support carrier and business customers. The IP/MPLS technology with tiered quality-of-service capabilities supports advanced communications and business applications including IP telephony and live multimedia content delivery over the Internet.

The network upgrade provides T-Com with the capability to activate authentication and accounting services for large numbers of customers.

In addition, T-Com can continue to provide best-in-class services to international organisations through the transparent integration of multiple customer networks, many of which are the result of customer merger and acquisition. The collaboration with T Com on Cisco IP/MPLS Interprovider solutions will help to streamline processes such as billing and provisioning of services across multiple networks, and reduce operational costs.

By consolidating several edge functions such as IP/MPLS and Ethernet into existing platforms, the Cisco 12000 Series is helping T-Com to roll out reliable QoS-based value-added service offerings for carriers and business customers, and to improve network performance.

"T-Com's Cisco 12000 Series upgrades are a prime example of how we're helping our service provider customers to protect their existing investment in Cisco routing technology, as well as helping find new service creation opportunities," commented Geraint Anderson, VP, Service Provider Wireline, for Cisco Systems EMEA. "By migrating network edge functions to the Cisco 12000 Series, T-Com will be able to reduce operational expenditure by simplifying network architectures, and advance its network foundation as it evolves to an IP Next-Generation network core infrastructure."

The Cisco 12000 series provides a platform for evolving existing service provider routing deployments to include innovations such as the Cisco IOS XR operating system. IOS XR offers key features such as secure virtualization, continuous system operation, and multiservice scale.