“This is a strategic win for us and our local partner Incotel,” comments Adam O'Hare, Business Director for Dataflex, “...and we are pleased to be working with such a forward thinking service provider like Entel in an implementation which highlights the flexibility offered by the ViNE product family to satisfy both the requirements of the service providers and end customers.”

Empresa Nacional de Telecommunications S.A. (Entel) is the second-largest Telecommunications Company in Chile offering mobile and long distance, local telephony, data and Internet services with 2004 revenues of approximately $1.3 billion and assets of over $2.2 billion. As part of a planned expansion programme, Entel has rolled out Chile’s first IP-Centrex over ADSL service aimed at small businesses to provide a lower cost and feature rich alternative to leased lines.

“Our new IP-Centrex product provides an enhanced service and range of features to our customers, “ comments Juan Cristobal Caceres, Product Manager Business Area, Entel, “ So to ensure that the customer premises equipment is suitable, we have had a long period of interoperability and performance testing which included over a dozen products from vendors in the US, Far-east and Europe.”

“In our trials, the Dataflex ViNE products performed exceptionally well and have the key advantage of seamless interoperability with the Huawei Softswitch used to deliver the service. The MGCP functionality of the Dataflex ViNE units gives our customers the option to use less complex IP-Phone handsets that further reduces initial startup costs. Also, because the ViNE units already support ADSL 2+ and can remotely switch between MGCP and SIP we have greater flexibility with our service.”

Entel is initially launching its new IP-Centrex service to key business customers ahead of a wider awareness campaign later in the year. “So far, feedback from initial trial customers has been very positive and we are now planning to expand the services across Chile,” Juan Cristobal Caceres adds.

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