zamtel and barclays bank zambia plc seals single largets commercial transaction worthy 16.4billion kwacha for two years

Zambia and Barclays bank Zambia plc have today signed a two year 16.4billion kwacha service agreement for the design, supply, delivery and maintenance of a national wide multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network connecting all Barclay’s main business centers and automated tailor machines (ATM’s).

Under the agreement, ZAMTEL will also meet Barclays international back haul connectivity requirements by providing data transport services their Kafue house headquarters in Lusaka and the ABSA towers Barclays bank offices in Johannesburg, south Africa.

ZAMTEL will also provide Barclays with national back haul connectivity for their disaster recovery network and the partnership is expected to enhance Barclays’s superior delivery of quality, real time banking solutions for their customers in the country.

The ZAMTEL scalable MPLS network solution has been tailor designed to provide Barclays with the capability of flexibly and quickly upgrading their bandwidth requirements as and when required to meet current and future business demands.

Speaking during the signing ceremony in Lusaka today, ZAMTEL chief executive officer Dr mupanga mwanakatwe says the strategic partnership clearly demonstrates the confidence that Barclays has in ZAMTEL’s capability, as the only total business and communication solutions provider in Zambia, to address and meet their business –critical telecommunications requirements.

Dr mwanakatwe says zamtel is ready to meet the needs of various corporate businesses for their national and international connectivity requirements through their newly deployed national optic fiber backbone and metro network that facilitates the interconnection of all major towns and cities of Zambia to the rest of the world.

And speaking at the same event, Barclays bank Zambia plc managing director savior chibiya says the partnership will build confidence in the banks customers and cater for future growth as it expands alternate channel banking solutions such as internet banking and mobile banking across all segments.
The multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) is a digital communications overlay technology that is independent of access technology and ZAMTEL offers national wide MPLS services using fiber access for premium services, copper access for standard services and wireless access for low budget requirements.

It also offers several technological benefits which include highly scalable routing and optimal use of network resources for any to any IP connectivity encompassing multiple customers, support of integrated voice, data and video services in a single converged network.

The MPLS also offers high network resilience, availability and redundancy that mitigates network failure and results in enhanced service quality and reliability