Chorus signs Datacom in move away from Telecom

Datacom's datacentres to house Chorus infrastructure

Chorus has entered into an agreement with Datacom to house infrastructure equipment in Datacom’s datacentres.

As part of its structural separation from Telecom, Chorus is required to withdraw from certain Telecom systems by June 2014. Chorus is also building new systems capability to support its own fibre products.

Chorus plans to move progressively away from Telecom, says spokesperson Melanie Marshall.

Chorus ran a tender process for datacentre services, which was won by Datacom. The company confirms that Telecom subsidiary Gen-i was a respondent and remains a supplier that Chorus is able to do business with on commercial terms, like any other supplier.

Chorus wouldn’t reveal the value of the contract with Datacom.

Despite the move to new suppliers Chorus and Telecom are likely to remain close in many aspects of their respective businesses. For example, Chorus and Telecom own different fibres in the same national backhaul cable, which Chorus manages on Telecom’s behalf.

Chorus CEO Mark Ratcliffe told Computerworld last year that the company will have a “very deep relationship with Telecom forever”.

“We’ve got some IT systems we share equally, some where they are the predominant user and some where we completely stand alone. We haven’t got a time frame for when they last one gets switched off. It’s a life’s work for people to move some of those systems across,”
he says.

Datacom was approached for comment but did not reply before print deadline.