Stockholm // 2005-05-02

PacketFront and Ementor develop a state of the art city network for Affärsverken in Karlskrona

PacketFront, the world leader in FTTH technology and next generation broadband aggregation, and Ementor will deliver services and products to Affärsverken’s investment in the state of the art city network in Karlskrona, Sweden. The arrangement with Affärsverken Karlskrona AB is a comprehensive and long term collaboration focusing on the development of the network that will be able to support both qualified services beneficial to the public sector, as well as to companies and individual residents.

This investment will provide Karlskrona with one of Sweden’s most modern city networks with high levels of capacity and security. The network will act as a conduit for information and services important to the community, e.g. home care, and other traffic such as TV and IP telephony.

"We are creating one of Sweden’s best city networks. It will make it possible to transport modern community services securely in the future and also provides benefits for the local business community which will be able to develop and supply its existing, as well as its new services, to its customers in a safe and secure manner", says Peter Larsson, Business Manager for the Communications Network at Affärsverken, the municipal company who is the network owner and communications operator for the city network.

In the business arrangement with Affärsverken, Ementor will be Affärsverken’s partner responsible for IT. Ementor designs the network and supplies Affärsverken with PacketFront’s wholly automatic broadband solution. The key component of PacketFront’s solution is BECS™, the award-winning service control and provisioning system. BECS enables operators to build and manage fully automated broadband networks with on-demand, self-provisioning functionality. This gives households the ability to increase capacity and change services for themselves, cutting out the delay of waiting for a third party to make the changes.

"We already have a comprehensive city network, but together with PacketFront and Ementor, we can now develop it further and ensure that the network will be able to meet the high demands of the future. The demands upon maintenance and operation of the network are now equally as important as our power and district heating network", says Jan Svensson, Managing Director-Affärsverken Karlskrona AB.

The city network is built to create stability, scalability and simple, effective administration. Affärsverken has chosen to build a common network that will handle all communication, telephony, data/IP and video (triple play). It is both cost effective and minimizes the risk of disturbances. To realize this, PacketFront’s fully automatic broadband solution was chosen.

"Affärsverken Karlskrona AB is working hard to develop one of Sweden’s best city networks. We are proud to have been chosen along with Ementor to help bring this about", says ParketFront’s CEO, Martin Thunman.

About Ementor
Ementor is one of Scandinavia’s leading companies in advising, technology and outsourcing, and among those companies that is growing most quickly in the expanding outsourcing market. With a focus on knowledge, Ementor offers its customers a unique end-to-end experience. Ementor has 2,300 employees and is represented in 21 cities and towns in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

About Affärsverkan Karlskrona AB
Affärsverken Karlskrona AB is a wholly owned municipal company with approximately 160 employees which provides power, district heating, refuse collection, boat traffic services and communications network services. Communications Network constitutes a separate business field with a comprehensive and finely meshed city network that is available to the greater part of Karlskrona. Currently, there are 6,000 LAN connections and the number is growing steadily. Communications Network also owns and operates the municipal network.