Cisco Systems, worldwide leader in networking for the internet, plans to bring domestic long distance telephony or DLD related state-of-the-art convergence technologies into India. To be used by companies entering DLD market, the technology will offer quick time to market, better service offerings, lower gestation period to get off the ground and a profitability model based on value-added services, claims a Cisco release. The company says that its multiprotocol label switching or MPLS technology will pave way for quicker implementation of networks through intelligent tag switching capabilities and will also offer adequate scalability to accommodate future growth and needs.

Describing the union government''s move to deregulate domestic long distance telephony as a "Giant step towards boosting economic growth in the country", Mr Manoj Chugh said,"With more players in DLD telephony India will witness quantum jump in telecom infrastructure leading to enhanced economic growth. The opening up of DLD offers a great opportunity for India to adopt new convergence technologies including voice over IP or VOIP and multiprotocol label switching or MPLS for carrying voice and data. VOIP allows telephones to place calls over IP based networks by converting voice into digital. Apart from improving quality of transmission the technology will bring down cost of service."