Cable & Wireless sign £300m Aviva deal

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Cable & Wireless has signed a six-year, £300 million contract with Aviva, the UK's largest insurance group.

The contract continues and expands the British company's existing relationship with Aviva, its preferred telecoms supplier for the past 12 years.

It will see Cable & Wireless providing 72 separate services, including voice telephony, data, local and wide area networks (IP-VPN and MPLS), to 35,000 Aviva staff in the UK and India.

"It is important to our market success that we are able to respond to business and customer needs promptly and reliably," said Igal Mayer, chief executive officer of Norwich Union Insurance, one of the companies in the group.

"This contract represents a significant commitment on both sides to ensure cost effective service on both sides to ensure cost effective service and reliability."

In the UK, Cable & Wireless will manage Aviva's exiting communications infrastructure, and in the future introduce IP telephony, IP contact services, managed Blackberry services and speech recognition technology.

The network will have more than 1000 sites, 57,000 telephone points and 74,000 data points.

Aviva said that the new services will help it improve communication with customers who are increasing their use of e-mail and e-commerce tools.

The insurance group also said the IP-based service will help it achieve significant cost savings.

Chief executive officer of Cable & Wireless Europe Jim Marsh said: "We're delighted Aviva has chosen to expand our already successful relationship."

"Working with the UK's largest insurance group is a testament to our competitiveness among enterprise customers, where our strong focus on customer service is paying dividends."

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