South African bank Absa has signed a five year deal, worth R1.7 billion ($236.5 million) with telecomms firm Telkom for the provision and management of a wide area network that will connect 2548 sites around the country.
Telkom says the bank will use the virtual private network to transfer data between branches, ATMs and IT data centres.
Ian Russell, chief administration officer, Absa, says the bank decided to upgrade its wide area network after conducting a two year internal review.
"This project will facilitate the expansion of branches, enable real time connectivity and provide redundancy in the event of disaster by using Telkom's Multi Protocol Label Switching solutions," says Russell.
The latest deal follows a R420 million deal between the two signed in 2001 aimed at improving Absa's customer service, e-business operations and network connectivity across the continent.