NetworkAdvantage™
> Commissions Pakistan Satellite Bandwidth-on-demand System.

Wellington, 31 December 2003

NetworkAdvantage™ Commissions Satellite Bandwidth-on-demand System For Automatic Circuit Restoration In Pakistan.

NetworkAdvantage™ Corporation in conjunction with LinkSat America, who acted as the prime contractor, have commissioned an automatic circuit restoration system over satellite for Cyber.Net in Pakistan. To meet their customer's needs for high availability, Cyber.Net, Pakistan's largest Internet Service Provider, chose NetworkAdvantage's satellite bandwidth-on-demand system to provide rapid automatic restoration of circuits between the major cities of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad in the event of landline transmission failure. The NetworkAdvantage™ system allows Cyber.Net to share a ‘pool’ of bandwidth for &lsruo;on-demand’ use by several backbone circuits, thereby saving satellite bandwidth costs.

Cyber.Net, backed by the Lakson Group of Companies, are rolling out a full suite of telecoms services throughout Pakistan, and fast becoming a significant operator in the region. To meet the need of their business customers for high availability telecoms services, Cyber.Net required the ability to quickly and automatically restore transmission in the event of failure of their primary landline circuits, identifying satellite as the most reliable method for service restoration.

“The NetworkAdvantage™ bandwidth-on-demand system has been integrated with our network management system to provide rapid and seamless restoration of our critical national backbone circuits” says M. Javed Wadood, Cyber.Net General Manager. “In addition to extending protection of our landline links to other cities, Cyber.Net are planning to offer a value-added flexible bandwidth satellite service to enterprises and organizations within Pakistan and neighbouring territories based on the NetworkAdvantage™ platform.”

“We are proud of our partnership with Cyber.Net and that the NetworkAdvantage™ system is providing an efficient and cost-effective solution to their requirement for a redundant communications network”, says Michael Elwood-Smith, CEO, NetworkAdvantage™ Corporation. “The need for circuit restoration exists wherever mission-critical information is transmitted. The reliability of satellite makes it a natural choice for primary or backup communications infrastructure.”

“With NetworkAdvantage™, satellite service providers can offer tailored packages tuned to customers changing needs, bandwidth as needed, when needed and where needed.”

Marc Nadon, Vice President of Sales for LinkSat America, saw an ideal fit for the NetworkAdvantage™ solution during the early stages of Cyber.Net's network needs evaluation. “The NetworkAdvantage™ BOD system appealed to us because of its unique, highly integrated network manager. It became clear to us during our evaluation of the various solutions available that this highly flexible platform represented the best fit for our client's needs.”