Copel starts building IP network

Brazil's Parana state electric power company Copel has started building a telecoms network based on internet protocol (IP) technology, the company said in a statement, without providing an investment figure. Britain's Damovo won the government contract to build the network, which will also use MPLS and Gigabit Ethernet technology, together with partners including US' Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR), Extreme Networks (Nasdaq: EXTR) and P-Cube, as well as Canada's Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT). The network is part of the state's electronic government plans, and allows voice-over-IP, internet access, videoconferencing and other types of multimedia services for public schools and state buildings. "We initiated the project with two basic objectives: to attend to the corporate necessity of technological modernization, and to attend to the demands of the state's digital inclusion project. A next generation network has been a dream of [Copel's] telecoms and IT departments," Copel telecoms superintendent Renato de Oliveira Fontes said in a statement "Our goal is to build a high-performance, reliable and secure network infrastructure to effectively service [our clients], as well as fulfill our own IT requirements," Fontes said.