Intelig to lease Iqara network for local telephony

Brazilian telco Intelig will use the fiber optic network of local carrier Iqara Telecom in greater Sao Paulo to deliver corporate data and voice telephony services, Intelig said in a statement. "We chose Iqara because it is the only company that unites all the necessary characteristics needed, in a competitive way, to enter [the corporate market of Sao Paulo]: neutrality, accessible interconnection costs, capilarity and great installation agility," Intelig marketing and sales director Kleber Meira said. In September, Intelig launched corporate local telephony in ten of Brazil's largest cities, and said at the time it expects these services to bring in 5% of total revenue for the 2004 year, and aims to secure a 10% market share of the corporate telephony business by 2005. The local corporate telephony market bills 10bn reais (US$3.47bn today) annually, according to the company. Intelig was created in 2000 to be the competitor for Brazil's long distance incumbent, Embratel. In the first two years of operation its services were limited to national and international long distance telephony. United Kingdom power company BG Group controls Iqara, which runs its Aura fiber network along the rights of way of BG's Sao Paulo unit Comgas. There are two separate networks, a synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) network and an Ethernet gigabit network, can reach speeds of up to 10GB/second.