Cisco lassos a big one

(Telephony) Despite pullbacks on carrier spending, Cisco Systems has managed to land a hefty new equipment contract. Today, the company will announce a $1 billion deal with El Paso Global Networks, the telecommunications subsidiary of natural gas company El Paso Corp. While the provider plans to spend $1 billion on equipment from Cisco, El Paso Global will spend another $1 billion on the fiber build out.

El Paso Global is deploying the Cisco 12400 Gigabit switch routers throughout its backbone and the 15454 in the metropolitan areas. The provider intends to "use the technology to build out a network that goes across the U.S. and penetrates deeply into metropolitan areas," said Larry Lang, vice president of marketing for Cisco’s service provider line of business.

El Paso Global plans on equipping more central offices in metropolitan areas to speed their connection time and set up with customers, Lang said. And while other traditional service providers may be feeling the pain of Wall Street’s change of heart, El Paso Global is a healthy company, capable of sustaining a build of this size, according to Lang.

Unlike many of the recent service provider wins for vendors, Cisco is not flipping the bill for this build via a loan in the form of equipment for the customer. El Paso Global is purchasing the equipment outright.

The company plans to use the network for bandwidth trading once it is built out.