EasyCall aims to become ‘Internet of choice’ in 2 years

EasyCall Communications, Phils. Inc. is spending millions of pesos in repositioning itself from being the country’s leading paging company to becoming an Internet company.

EasyCall president Modesto N. Cervantes said that in order to be more competitive, it has to provide new services aside from its traditional messaging service. "We are reengineering and reinventing ourselves, moving from a paging company into an Internet company. We are the number one paging company. Give us time, maybe in two years, we will be the Internet of choice," he said.

Cervantes said the ultimate plan is to provide business-to-business and business-to-customer solutions to the corporate market like web-based business solutions (ordering, reservations, co-location, e-customer relations management), network management solutions, state of the art data centers and other connectivity solutions.

In order to carry on with its plan EasyCall signed up with WeSolv Open Computing, Inc., the networking and communications subsidiary of Fujitsu Philippines, Inc., to implement a high-speed, high-density dial access network infrastructure for its Internet business.

WeSolv was also responsible for installing the new regional ATM core-edge backbone network of PLDT and five major ASEAN international telecom operators called ACASIA. The network aims to meet the growing demand in the region for higher speed data communications.

Initially configured at 2,640 ports for Internet access with a plan to provide New World services like roaming virtual private network (VPN) services, EasyCall’s Internet service will enable multinational corporate customers to provide secure, cost-effective intranet access for their mobile and telecommuting employees and remote branch offices.

WeSolv positioned Cisco’s AccessPath carrier-class access system said to be a proven carrier-class equipment for high-density universal access network for EasyCall’s network requirements. AccessPath integrates access servers, backbone routers, a switching engine, a system controller and management software, giving EasyCall an easy-to-manage solution that accommodates E1 lines.

Cervantes noted that it was important to think at a higher level: solution objectives that are the sum of several hardware and software components as EasyCall jumps into the Internet business.

He added that they recognized early on the need to develop a leading-edge network infrastructure early to better serve its customers and to reduce operating expenses so that the company could compete more effectively going forward.