July 25, 2006 – Redback Networks, a provider of broadband networking systems, has announced that Telefonica del Sur (Telsur), the current carrier in Chile’s southern region, has chosen Redback’s SmartEdge® Multi-Service Edge Router to expand its next generation network and power its business and residential services.

Already a Redback customer for five years, Telsur plans to leverage the combination of edge routing, Ethernet aggregation and subscriber management to simplify their network, to expand capacity and to decrease the time to market for new services. The upgraded Smart Broadband Network is designed to reduce capital and operational expenses.

According to Point-Topic, Chile is one of the top countries in broadband penetration in Latin America. With a subscriber growth rate of over 100% per year, ADSL has surpassed cable to become the leading broadband access technology in Chile during 2004. Large investments in telecommunications, a favorable regulatory environment, and e-government initiatives were all factors in Chile’s broadband growth.

Iñaki Larraza, director of operations at Telsur has stated, “we needed a proven platform that could scale our next generation network and provide a smooth migration from ATM to Ethernet transport and advanced IP services …. The combination of edge routing and subscriber management should enable us to provide value-added services such as Self Enrollment, Tiered Bandwidth, and future services such as IPTV and fixed mobile convergence.”

John Spiliotis, vice president of sales and operations for the Americas at Redback has said, “we're proud to have Telefonica del Sur as they join a larger population of Redback customers in Latin America. Redback is responding to the demand in Latin America by increasing sales and support throughout the region …. We look forward to mutual success for Telefonica del Sur and Redback as we address the demand for broadband services in Latin America.”

The Smart Broadband Network provides a single, converged IP network infrastructure that can deliver voice, video and data services with a simplified architecture that reduces both capital and operational expenditures. A recent study by Yankee Group found that deploying a product with capabilities similar to the SmartEdge multi-service edge routers can reduce the total cost of ownership of a next generation network by over 20%, including the reduction of operations expense by over 50%.