SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- (Marketwire) -- 09/24/12 -- Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced today that it has been selected by NBN Co to provide equipment for its national data connectivity network. Established by the Australian federal government, NBN Co will design, build and operate Australia's wholesale-only, high-speed broadband network, the National Broadband Network (NBN).

After a competitive tender, Cisco was awarded the contract to supply Multi-Protocol Layer Switching on Cisco® routers and firewalls to support NBN Co's National Connectivity Network (NCN) in a deal estimated to be worth up to $38 million over five years. The Cisco intelligent network technology will be deployed in NBN Co's depot, aggregation nodes and other key locations and will support the Operations Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS) platforms, signalling and timing.

In particular, the NCN will play a key role in activating and assuring services as homes and businesses across Australia connect onto the NBN. Cisco will commence work on the five-year project immediately.

NBN Co's executive general manager of Network Architecture and Technology, Tony Cross, said: "We are pleased to extend our relationship with Cisco as a supplier of data centre infrastructure to include the supply of a high-performing, highly secure network foundation composed of switches, routers and firewalls to support our NCN."

"This equipment will enable communication between NBN Co's centralised operational staff and IT systems with the fibre, fixed wireless and satellite equipment situated at various locations across Australia. The remote control of this equipment, via the NCN, will allow new services to be activated and faults to be diagnosed and repaired quickly and efficiently across Australia," said Cross.

The win formally expands Cisco's role in the development of the NBN. In late 2010, a consortium led by Cisco was awarded the contract to provide NBN Co with a data centre platform. Together with its technology partners EMC and VMware, Cisco was commissioned to build a scalable platform to run essential applications, including network management, inventory management, customer care, billing, service provisioning and fulfilment systems, as well as a web portal to support customer self-service and the corporate website.

Sam Gerner, director of Service Provider and Cloud for Cisco Australia and New Zealand, said, "We are very pleased with the success of the data centre deployment at NBN Co to date. This has been an important project for both organisations and has enabled industry-leading data centre capabilities for NBN Co's significant scale and flexibility requirements. We are thrilled to be selected as preferred partner in the building of the NCN and we look forward to continuing our involvement with NBN Co on this exciting journey."

Notes to Editors

• An aggregation node is a facility that provides a Point of Interconnect to NBN Retail Service Providers (RSPs).
• NBN Co forecasts that it will roll out to nearly 12 million premises by 2021, passing around 6,000 premises each day -- at peak capacity.

About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com.au. For ongoing news from Australia and New Zealand, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/anz.

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