[July 13, 2005] ECI Telecom Does Romania Tweet ECI Telecom implements its MSPP for Romania’s Astral Telecom. By DAVID SIMS TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist Israeli-based ECI Telecom announced today that it has implemented the XDM Multi-Service Provisioning Platform in Astral Telecom's network. Astral Telecom is one of the bigger national providers in Romania of analog and digital cable TV, Internet, and voice services. The XDM MSPP is already installed in Astral's national 10 Gbps (STM-64/OC-192) SDH backbone network and connects all the major cities in Romania. The ECI contract is specifically designed to provide Astral's customers with next generation services. ECI's Build-As-You-Grow approach is a good fit for Astral, mainly because it lets the Romanian telecom pay as it goes, leasing lines to other carriers and for cross border interconnection as needed. The new platform itself lets Astral extend its network to connect new cities and offer more profitable services. Another consideration is that the XDM MSPP platforms allow Astral to migrate to DWDM as the network grows, without changing the existing platform. Astral has grown tremendously since 2003, when it contracted with Cisco to provide Voice over IP services to its subscriber base. At that time the Romanian telecom was providing cable TV to 650,000 subscribers in over 100 towns and data services to over 9000 online customers in more than 20 cities. Today Astral Telecom, with 800,000 cable subscribers in over 170 locations, provides broadband Internet access and data transmission services in Bucharest and some other 30 major Romanian cities. "Astral has been quick to take advantage of the new opportunities presented by the deregulation of the Romanian telecom market," commented Michael Bayer, director of service provider marketing, Cisco Systems EMEA. According to the Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, following the opening up of the fixed line market in January 2003, several new players including Astral and Atlas Telecom have emerged, although Romtelecom‘s leading position is not yet threatened. “Mobile telephony has been at the forefront of the telecom market‘s development,” the consultancy writes, adding that “voice transmission services still dominate the market, although there is a clear trend towards bundled product packages with increased value added.” Astral has upgraded its network infrastructure and has now, in most of the cities it operates, broadband optical fiber networks capable of providing the full package of services including video, Internet and telephony/voice. ----- David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit: http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/columnists/columnist.aspx?id=100005&nm=David%20 Sims [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]