Alcatel lands €25m voice and multimedia network deal

Deutsche Telekom-parented Slovak Telecom today announced it has signed up Alcatel to supply equipment for a €25m VoIP and multimedia network.

The new network will be an upgrade of the company's elderly analogue voice infrastructure and will mean Slovak Telecom can begin rolling out broadband services including gaming and music downloads, VoIP and multimedia conferencing.

Slovak Telecom will be able to merge its voice and data networks for the first time, as well as enabling multimedia services to be distributed over a single platform. The network will be built on Alcatel's IP-based Next Generation Network and will replace the existing voice infrastructure.

Herbert Müller, Slovak Telecom's CEO, said the network will allow the company to ramp up its multimedia offerings. "By essentially skipping the digitalisation stage, we are able to very quickly begin introducing high-value broadband - far more quickly than we had anticipated," he said in a statement.