Announcing the news at CES 2015, Cisco and Proximus have entered into a strategic partnership. The two firms stated that they have defined three key areas for growth.

The partnership will focus on next-generation video delivery for consumers, smart city services for government organisations and service orchestration for B2B consumers.

The collaboration will see Proximus’s mass market video offer centralised on an open cloud architecture, instead of the consumer’s digital video recorder. This will enable additional cloud-based features including cloud-sourced programme ratings and additional storage space.

The partnership will also accelerate the development and delivery of smart city business models, allowing Proximus customers to use Cisco’s network service orchestration technology to configure network services online.

Dominique Leroy, CEO, Proximus, commented: "This long-term agreement not only reinforces our existing cooperation, it also shows Proximus’s commitment to innovation and improving customer service. We want to build a future that will benefit our customers, our employees, our shareholders and our partners. That transformation strategy will help us return to growth."

John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco, added: "As the leading service provider in Belgium and Luxembourg, Proximus has an extensive innovation track record. Proximus sees the benefits of transforming networks to a software-based, agile platform."

"We are expanding our collaboration to embrace the benefits of the Internet of Everything (IoE) with cloud-based video solutions, virtualised managed services solutions and much more."

"Together with Proximus, we will co-develop a transformation roadmap towards more agile and cost efficient infrastructure that can sustainably cope with growth in volumes, rightsizing of operational resource and changes in skills and competencies."