Sri Lanka Telecom announced recently that it has awarded Alcatel the contract to supply its Metro Ethernet solution to support the roll out of its advanced voice, video, and higher-speed Internet services. The CEO of SLT, Shuhei Anan, said that SLT has an ambition to bring state-of-the-art Internet services throughout the country and that a solid foundation, which was also scalable and cost-effective, was required to achieve this. SLT will deploy Metro Ethernet to deliver end-to-end intelligent solutions to its corporate and SMB customers based on state-of-the-art MPLS technology. SLT will deliver new services such as VPLS (Virtual Private LAN services) and Corporate LAN Interconnections through Metro Ethernet Network. The Metro Ethernet Network will also be used as an access network for IP NPN services. SLTs Metro Ethernet is a triple-play-ready network where voice, data, and video services can be supported. This network guarantees the highest level of network availability, resiliency, Quality of Services (QoS), and scalability for these quality sensitive and bandwidth-intensive services. These services provide unique benefits to businesses in search of greater value, affordable Internet and data network connections, easy upgrades when more bandwidth is required, and many other features through native Ethernet interface. Under Phase One of this project, the first access ring, which will connect about ten high-rise buildings within the Colombo city, will be commissioned by April 2006. Meanwhile, fiber laying has already begun in the other stages which will connect about 100 more high-rises and corporate head offices in Colombo. “SLT is the first telecom provider in the region to achieve a Metro Access Network based on MPLS technology, which will provide sub SOms resiliency in order to ensure that there is no impact on real time applications such as voice and video in case of a fiber cable failure;’ said KA K Perera, DGM and Head of Data Services and VoIP, SLT.
