Telstra spending $600M on cloud-based UC for businesses

Australian telco Telstra said it plans to invest $600 million to upgrade communications options for 90 percent of the country's businesses and, in partnership with Microsoft and Cisco, provide them with cloud-based unified communications.

The QoS upgrades will encompass 1,6000 exchanges and take the telco until September to complete.

The Digital Business package will cost businesses $120 a month and include a basic ADSL2+ connection to businesses, a Cisco Router and a Cisco digital phone. Customers can pay an additional $15 a month to have their Internet and voice connection switch over to the Telstra NextG network automatically if the ADSL connection fails.

Telstra said VoIP service would likely follow the QoS upgrade, once it "can give all the reliability and also the technical backup we think the product needs, then we will bring it to market."

For more:
- see this Gizmodo article

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