KUALA LUMPUR--3Com Asia has secured a deal to build a metropolitan area network (MAN) and provide associated networking equipment to IGB Corporation's Mid Valley City (MVC) development in Malaysia's capital city.
Under the agreement, the Santa Clara-based networking gear maker will supply a suite of products needed to implement a multi-vendor network that will support high-end business services at MVC. Malaysian communications service provider Macro Lynx will oversee the implementation of the new MAN.
Located in Kuala Lumpur, MVC consists of 50 acres of master-planned development with a built-up potential of 18 million square feet (sq ft), and incorporates four hotels, two retail malls and office and residential complexes.
The first phase of the new project will see the development of The Gardens, a one million sq ft complex comprising office units and service apartments, and is scheduled to be opened in October.
"This partnership signifies a milestone in MVC's track record as a strategically located business center," said Robert Tan, IGB's group managing director, who declined to reveal the cost of the investment.
The Malaysian real estate developer designed MVC to be a wired city--based on an optical fiber backbone--that allows visitors to surf the Internet at speeds of up to 45Mpbs (megabits per second) and enjoy a rich online experience. Although already wired up with fiber optic cables when it was built in 1999, the city complex did not implement a high-speed broadband network until now.
Macro Lynx will deploy 3Com's Open Service Networking (OSN) infrastructure, an open-source architecture that company executives said will enable multi-vendor products to be integrated into MVC's networks.
"We were drawn to 3Com's OSN platform [because it] met our need for an open-systems network," said Mark Chua, senior vice-president for Macro Lynx, at a press briefing Tuesday. "This would enable us to put in other open network components as required, and help us protect our investment."
Edwin Yapp is a freelance IT writer based in Malaysia.
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