Aviva signs £300m comms deal

The world's fifth largest insurance group, Aviva has signed a six-year contract with Cable & Wireless Europe, Asia & US worth £300m.

The insurance company, which was formed from Norwich Union and GNU (itself the union of Commercial Union and General Accident) in 2002, will be using C&W for 72 separate services including telephony, data and IPVPN and MPLS wide area networking to support its 35,000 staff in the UK and India.

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In total, C&W will be responsible for connecting over 1,000 sites with 57,000 and 74,000 data points. The contract is an extension to an existing partnership between the two companies, which has lasted for 12 years.

Two new services from the deal will be managed BlackBerry services and speech recognition. It is expected that the move to IP telephony will significantly reduce costs for the insurance group.

Norwich Union Insurance CEO Igal Mayer said in a statement: "It is important to our market success that we are able to respond to business and customer needs promptly and reliably. This contract represents a significant commitment on both sides to ensure cost effective service against the backdrop of a highly competitive marketplace."