Dante selects Elisa for high capacity services in Baltics

March 22 2006, HELSINKI, ELISA, the leading Telco in Finland, and DANTE, the organisation responsible for building and managing research and education networks throughout the world, today announced a contract whereby Elisa will provide high speed capacity services to DANTE between Tallinn, Riga and Kaunas to support the development of the GÉANT2 network.

The services of Elisa will enable DANTE to continue to upgrade the capacity and services of GÉANT2 in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the Baltic states the new architecture of the GÉANT2 network will be based on Wavelength and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy technologies at 2,5 gigabits per second. The GÉANT2 network will further improve the connectivity of the Baltic national Research and academic networks to the pan-European research community.

In the Baltics Elisa’s local partner is Baltic Optical Network which is an alliance is of the telecommunications companies owned by the leading energy companies of the Baltic Countries.

“This is an extraordinary opportunity for our company to contribute to the mission of the pan-European Research and Education Network, GÉANT2.” says Markku Lempinen, Head of Department, Elisa. “We are happy about the quick adaptation of new advanced services in these countries. The new high-speed connections of GÉANT2 in the Baltics will further strengthen the role of the Baltic countries as one of the fastest developing Information Societies in Europe”.

“We are pleased to be able to extend wavelength capacity to our Baltic partners as part of GÉANT2.” said Dai Davies, General Manager, DANTE.

About ELISA

Elisa is a full-service telco offering its customers diverse voice and data services, connections to the Internet and content services, voice solutions, customised communication and ICT solutions, international communication solutions and network operator services. Elisa’s 2005 revenue amounted to EUR 1.34 billion, and the company had 4 600 employees by the year-end. Elisa’s networks carried all in all 1.3 million fixed connections at the end of 2005. The broadband business experienced robust growth and subscriptions stood at 420 000 by the year-end. The company’s mobile network held 2 million subscriptions at the end of 2005. Elisa is quoted on the Helsinki Stock Exchange and has approximately 300 000 stockholders, comprising domestic and international institutional investors, as well as Finnish households.

In Estonia Elisa has a strong local presence with its own mobile network and approximately 25% market share of the Estonian total telecom market. In Latvia and Lithuania Elisa is providing services by cooperating with local partners.

About DANTE

DANTE is a non-profit organization whose primary mission is to plan, build and manage research and education networks on behalf of Europe’s National Research and Education Networks. Established in 1993, DANTE has been fundamental to the success of pan-European research and education networking. DANTE is currently building GÉANT2, which will upgrade the GÉANT network and will continue to provide the data communications infrastructure essential to the success of many research projects in Europe.

DANTE is involved in initiatives worldwide to interconnect countries in other regions to one another and to GÉANT2. DANTE is currently managing initiatives focused on the Mediterranean, Latin American and Asia-Pacific regions through the EUMEDCONNECT, ALICE and TEIN2 projects respectively. For more information please visit: www.dante.net

About GÉANT2

GÉANT2 delivers the next generation research and education network for Europe. With over 30 million users in 34 countries across the continent, GÉANT2 offers unrivalled geographical coverage, high bandwidth, innovative hybrid networking technology and a range of user-focused services. Its extensive geographical reach interconnects with other world regions, enabling global research collaboration.GÉANT2’s comprehensive programme of research and service development keeps Europe at the forefront of global research.

GÉANT2 is co-funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Research and Development Framework Programme. The project partners are 30 European National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), TERENA and DANTE. It is co-ordinated by DANTE, the research networking organisation that plans, manages and builds research networks all over the world. For more information please visit: www.geant2.net

Contact Information

Markku Lempinen

Head of Department

Elisa Corporation

Contact via E-mail