Telstra secures $62.5m AGL network upgrade

Telstra has won a deal to deploy a $62.5 million managed IP data network for AGL energy, one of Australia's largest suppliers of electricity.

The network, which will form the backbone of a five-year contract, will replace the electricity provider's three current data networks and increase capacity between its twelve main sites across Australia.

The upgrade will take between six and nine months and will include deployment of new mobile handsets, wireless broadband services and BlackBerry smarphones. It will also include the capability for AGL to scale up or down the capacity of their network when needed.

Owen Coppage, AGL CIO, said the new contract followed a "long-term relationship" between the two companies. Previosly, Telstra just managed the connectivity of the network. It will now manage the entire network, including security.

John Paitaridis, Telstra executive director of enterprise and government, said the upgrade would require new routers but wouldn't require too much to be done to the infrastructure.

"We're upgrading most of the key site's backbone and we will be fully managing the routers," he said.

Under the terms of the deal, Telstra will also offer protection from antivirus, antispam and denial of service attacks. Paitaridis said the security offering was one of Telstra's "core offerings" and one of the reasons AGL had chosen Telstra to manage their security.

"We've been able to develop these services and they are very effective and our clients speak highly of them," Paitaridis said.