Hanaro Telecom Upgrades Metro Ethernet Service with Cisco Systems Equipment; Hanaro Opts for Stability and Scalability offered by Cisco Solutions for High-BAN Service

Business Wire, Dec 3, 2002

Business Editors and High Tech Writers

ITU Telecom Asia 2002

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 3, 2002

Cisco Systems, Inc., has been chosen as the technology supplier for Hanaro Telecom's High-BAN service. The service is a metro Ethernet-based service aimed at Internet cafes countrywide. Cisco Metro Ethernet Switching solutions will be used to increase availability of Hanaro's highly successful service in order to cope with rapid growth in the installation rate of the service.

The High-BAN service offers Internet cafes with a high-speed, reliable and cost-effective alternative to T1/E1-class services. For about half the cost of TDM-based services, High-BAN customers enjoy twice the bandwidth. This value proposition was one of the factors for High-BAN's popularity, and the service now has 2,000 to 2,500 Internet cafe customers.

"When we first launched High-BAN last year, we used relatively low-priced switches from another supplier. However, the number of subscribers grew exponentially after only three to four months and network stability started to become an issue," said Mr. Ko, Young-Wook, IT network planning manager for Hanaro Telecom. "To build a safer and more scalable network, we decided to migrate our network over to Cisco Metro Ethernet switches."

The High-BAN service will be augmented with Cisco Metro Ethernet Switching solutions including the Cisco Catalyst(R) 4000 Series and Catalyst 6500 Series switches. Cisco Metro Ethernet Switching solutions help provide flexible, next-generation connectivity based on the most widely understood networking protocol, Ethernet, together with a consistent quality of service (QoS) and security foundation to deploy advanced services such as video on demand, broadcast TV, video conferencing, voice over IP, virtual private networks, and storage.

"The telecommunications market in Korea is one of the most exciting in the world with innovative operators such as Hanaro driving new IP services. Hanaro's decision to upgrade the High-BAN network with Cisco gear also highlights the value that we bring to service providers. Cisco offers leading networking solutions as well as an intimate understanding of the new IP services such as metro Ethernet to our service provider customers," said Andrew Murray, vice president, service provider operations, Asia Pacific, Cisco Systems.

The Cisco Catalyst 4003, 4006 and 6509 switches were installed in Hanaro's transmission offices and points of presence (PoPs) countrywide. Hanaro says it plans to continue to use Cisco switches in the future as demand grows for High-BAN.

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