As briefly reported (CI 1,724), Northern Telecom Ltd has won a $120m contract to supply local telephone exchanges in Poland. It is the Canadian company’s first Polish contract and comes seven months after the Polish parliament liberalised the telecommunications regime to separate operator and equipment companies and national, international and local regions. Northern Telecom is to supply its DMS-10 local switches to Polmaik, a Polish telecommunications equipment supplier, which has contracts to provide equipment in three of Poland’s local telecom regions. The DMS-10 has also been supplied in the local Hungarian network and its big brother, the international DMS-300 exchange is the switching technology behind the GTE Spacenet exercise to provide a Moscow with an international digital telephone and fax service. Northern Telecom has agreed to establish an assembly plant in Poland for its local DMS exchanges next year, and is negotiating a partnership programme with local firms on manufacturing and maintenance services. A spokesman for the company said it was early days to say exactly what will happen but that some research and development – to adapt Northern Telecom’s products for the Polish market – would probably take place locally.
