The City of Amsterdam Starts Building Fibre Network Using Cisco Ethernet Fibre to the Home Technology to Deliver Telephony, TV and Internet Services

Today marks the beginning of the building of a city-wide glass
fibre network in the City of Amsterdam. The objective of Glasvezelnet
Amsterdam is to create an open and future-secure communication
infrastructure through an innovative private and public collaboration.
The rollout of the network starts in the Zeeburg district of
Amsterdam, followed by Oost/Watergraafsmeer and Osdorp.

The network is designed to provide a new and advanced
communication infrastructure for the inhabitants of Amsterdam, giving
them a wider choice of new service packages including telephony, TV
and internet access at competitive prices. In addition to the usual
network services, such as download services and the ability for
consumers to easily share their own multimedia material with family
and friends, the intention is to provide additional applications with
added social value via the glass fibre network, such as tele-care or
tele-learning. At present, the set-up of the Amsterdam glass fibre
network is already attracting much international attention.

The activation and utilization of the network is managed by Cisco
(NASDAQ:CSCO) partner BBNed, a supplier of broadband services to
service providers. The target is to connect 450,000 citizens,
institutes and companies to the new glass fibre network before 2010.

Michiel Panders, Commercial Director Service Providers at Cisco:
"Working in cooperation with our partner BBNed, Cisco's Intelligent
Information Network will form the foundation of the glass fibre
network of Amsterdam. Ethernet Fibre to the Home (E-FTTH) is a
fantastic broadband technology that offers many possibilities. Because
of the collaboration between various parties, we are able to
contribute to supplying new, innovative services to citizens and
companies in Amsterdam."

A unique feature of the glass fibre network project is that it is
conceived as three distinct layers that are independently realized by
three parties. For the infrastructure, Glasvezelnet Amsterdam (GNA) is
laying the network and will remain the owner of the physical ducting,
glass fibre and area supply buildings. ARCADIS is responsible for the
preparations as well as the technical consultation and coordination of
the network installation, as well as drafting the contracts for the
service provision, management and maintenance of the network. The
combination of companies BAM/VandenBerg-Draka (BD) are building the
network and will be responsible for the maintenance of the network.
For the realization of the second layer, activation and utilization of
the network, BBNed is leasing the glass fibres from GNA. The third
layer is the service layer: all the service providers will be able to
buy transport capacity on the open network in order to offer new
services.

CityNet is based on an MPLS core network with a unique Ethernet
Fibre to the Home (E-FTTH) design using a per-service virtual local
area network (VLAN) architecture. Each VLAN is terminated on a
different physical port at the customer premises equipment, providing
logical separation of services, for example Internet, video and
telephony services. This allows each end-user to have multiple
subscriptions to a range of services, with each subscription invoiced
separately by a specialist service provider. The Cisco E-FTTH solution
includes Cisco 7600 Series Routers and the Cisco Catalyst(R) 4500
Series Switches.

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