Swisscom to modernise nationwide network

Switzerland’s largest telecommunications company, Swisscom, said on Thursday that it plans to modernise the nationwide telecommunications network in cooperation with Siemens of Germany and United States-based Cisco Systems.

Switzerland’s largest telecommunications company, Swisscom, said on Thursday that it plans to modernise the nationwide telecommunications network in cooperation with Siemens of Germany and United States-based Cisco Systems. Siemens and Cisco will start work as soon as January 2000.

Swisscom said it wanted to modernise its network and continue the development of a packet-switched network based on Internet Protocol (IP) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).

It said the aim of the modernisation was to increase flexibility for the launch of new services and to create a standard platform for electronic commerce and broadband communication.

Swisscom said it invests “considerably” each year in upgrading and extending the network infrastructure.

Siemens and Cisco Systems will have to develop and oversee a migration strategy to the new network, which will converge voice and date communications on a standard multi-service platform.

“The cooperation with Siemens and Cisco will allow Swisscom to reduce investment and technology risks and to benefit from the international experience of both companies,” Swisscom said.

Other suppliers active in this area of telecommunications and data systems are Alcatel of France or Lucent Technologies Inc of the U.S.

Swisscom said earlier this month it planned to spin off a minority stake in its Blue Window Internet business in the first half of next year.

It said it would convert the Internet service into a stock company in order to increase the flexibility of the unit for partnerships and to encourage further growth.

Based on the value per subscriber of recent international Internet IPOs, Blue Window could be worth some SFr2 billion ($1.27 billion) if floated.

Started three years ago, Blue Window has a market share of one-third, making it the leading provider in Switzerland ahead of SwissOnline of cable television group Cablecom and MSN of Microsoft Corp.

From staff and wire reports.