[September 23, 2004]

Completel Switches to VoIP with Nortel

BY JOHANNE TORRES

As VoIP powers up the corporate world, companies keep switching their traditional telecom systems to take advantage of the popular technology. Joining the crowd comes high-speed telecom solutions operator Completel, who just signed an agreement with Nortel Networks ( news – alert - quote) to transition its network to a VoIP-powered communications platform. Completel has been planning the switch for several months now. The company says it wanted its voice and data integrated into one single network for its business clients.

"Nortel Networks is proud to have been chosen by Completel for this project," said Michel Clement, president and general manager, Nortel Networks France. "We fully support Completel's vision of moving its network toward 'all IP' while at the same time preserving their voice service capacity, which has been the basis of their success. This will help position them to reduce their operating costs and investment costs. And with their new next generation network, Completel will be able to launch an entire series of new innovative voice and multimedia services, thus strengthening their position as a leader in the French market."

With the VolP solution in place, Completel ( news – alert - quote) will allow its business custo mers to benefit from more economical voice and data solutions that are easier to imple ment and control—thanks to convergence between voice and data networks; and homogenous levels of services of an identical quality regardless of the size of the sites and their geographical situation.

The newly installed IP network will be based on fiber-optic access for main sites and on DSL access for the other sites on a national scale and will support basic voice services, IP Centrex-type services (PBX outsourcing), virtual call centers, and video conferencing; and future multi media services such as instant unified Voice Messaging Services (VMS) ( news – alert) and multi media work stations.

"This technological progress allows the geographical extension of our market to be addressed throughout the country beyond our main land fiber-optic networks," said Jerome de Vitry, president and CEO, Completel. "It also allows a more significant part of the needs of our existing and future clients to be addressed. In parallel, the investment in VolP will be quickly made more profitable. The incremental investments required by our growth will be more limited in future with the VolP technology than they were with the TDM technology."

Nortel Networks

http://www.nortelnetworks.com

Completel

http://www.Completel.com

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