BNZ joins in global venture

By Richard Braddell

WELLINGTON - The Bank of New Zealand is to join in a global venture to develop group telecommunications signed between its parent, National Australia Bank, and the Concert, the international joint venture owned by British Telecom and AT&T.

NAB is looking to Concert to hasten the introduction of internet protocol or web-based applications that will offer seamless integration of data and voice.

The agreement with Concert, which has close links with British Telecom owned Clear Communications comes soon after British Telecom and AT&T cleared the last regulatory hurdle to their joint ownership of Concert after the exit of MCI last year.

Announcing the deal, NAB executive Glenn Barnes said the agreement to use Concert's web-based applications would propel NAB into the digital world of intranets and extranets at a "competitively superior pace".

But although the Concert deal applies globally, the BNZ recently signed a three year telecommunications agreement with Telstra NZ under which it has rolled out an internet protocol network to all but 50 of its 197 branches.

Although Telstra has a similar contract with NAB in Australia, the BNZ's business technology manager, Glenn Patrick, said the Concert agreement would sit on top of that, providing applications to be run across the facilities being developed by Telstra.

Mr Patrick said Concert's development of applications conformed with the group's strategy in the last year of developing systems for global application.

The personal internet banking service being unveiled by the BNZ today was an example of that.