Bank, Telstra inks deal

 By SHIRLEY MAULUDU

WESTPAC has signed a multi-million dollar deal with Telstra to provide domestic data network, primary internet access and outbound voice at Westpac branches in PNG and other Pacific Island nations.

The five year contract with Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications and media company,  will include network connectivity, digital media solutions, Wi-Fi, audio conferencing and data centre connectivity. 

Westpac Pacific communications consultant Evnike Yardley said they were pleased to rollout the new development at its Papua New Guinea subsidiary after signing a deal worth about A$100 million (K259 million) with Telstra.

“As a business we are pleased to have invested heavily in telecommunications infrastructure in PNG. We have redundant communications in our key sites and we utilise Telikom PNG’s (TPNG) MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) network where we can, and this will continue to improve as time progresses.

“We see the main benefit being the stability of continuing our relationship with our existing telecommunications partners in Papua New Guinea, that is Telstra, TPNG and Digicel, allowing us to focus on ensuring we have the best telecommunications systems in place to serve our customers.”

The exact value of the contract was not disclosed, but is likely to exceed K259.4 million.

Yardley said: “We are investing in a brand new data centre in our new head office in Port Moresby and we’re excited that our data centre goes live in June this year.”

“In Papua New Guinea, Westpac Pacific uses a combination of TPNG and Digicel for support to our branches and ATMs, and we use an international fibre link from PNG to Australia. 

“We continue to use TPNG’s MPLS network in Port Moresby which has helped with our redundancy and stability and we continue to use Digicel as back up telecommunications in some of our key sites.”