$60 million for Telecom network upgrade

By PETER GRIFFIN

Telecom will be preoccupied by the switch to "multiprotocol label switching" (MPLS) for the rest of the year as it spends $60 million introducing new network equipment that allows voice, video and data to be carried on one converged network.

Telecom's head of network investment, Stephen Crombie, said the company was putting in place the core network that would provide a range of new services to be released over the next two years.

MPLS is being implemented by most carriers around the world as the technology can carry differing types of traffic the same way and is more economical as it allows the functions of IP networks and traditional circuit switched networks to be served over one infrastructure.

Eight large "carrier grade" IP switches and 36 regional switches will be installed using equipment from Juniper Networks.

While Telecom already delivers voice over internet protocol (VoIP) with IP Centrex, new services will come online offering better quality service more efficiently.

Once the MPLS core is in place Telecom will prepare new VoIP services from the middle of next year.

The ageing switches that underpin Telecom's network will begin to be replaced for the end of next year while IP phones working over DSL connections into households will be in place from early 2006.