Cisco says that it has signed a contract worth up to $38 million over five years to supply Multi-Protocol Layer Switching (MPLS) on Cisco routers and firewalls to support NBN Co's National Connectivity Network (NCN). The NCN is part of the Australian National Broadband Network (NBN) effort.

The NCN will help activate and assure services as homes and businesses connect onto the NBN. The Cisco equipment will serve in depot, aggregation nodes, and other “key locations” to support the Operations Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS) platforms, signaling, and timing. Cisco says it will begin work on the five-year project immediately.

"We are pleased to extend our relationship with Cisco as a supplier of data center infrastructure to include the supply of a high-performing, highly secure network foundation composed of switches, routers and firewalls to support our NCN," said NBN Co's executive general manager of network architecture and technology, Tony Cross.

"This equipment will enable communication between NBN Co's centralized operational staff and IT systems with the fiber, fixed wireless, and satellite equipment situated at various locations across Australia. The remote control of this equipment, via the NCN, will allow new services to be activated and faults to be diagnosed and repaired quickly and efficiently across Australia," Cross added.

This is the second aspect of the NBN that will involve Cisco. A consortium led by the company was awarded the contract to provide NBN Co with a data center platform. The consortium includes EMC and VMware.