Shares in telecommunications group Stentor rose 73 per cent yesterday, closing at 92.5p sterling (€1.46), following an announcement that it had concluded a deal with Cisco Systems.

Stentor is buying hardware and software from Cisco, which will enable to provide intelligent call routing and Web enablement services to the call centre and corporate sector in Ireland, Europe and the US.

Stentor chief executive Mr Gerard O'Keeffe said the Cisco technology would help companies to balance calls between call centres at multiple sites. He said companies had various disciplines and skills in each call centre and wanted to route their calls on a call by call basis as they came in. He said, in the past, it had been done via static routing - providing a certain percentage of calls to each centre. However, this technology operates with each call centre, providing details of how many call centre agents are logged on, who is free and who is engaged. An increasing number of people are using companies' websites to get product information, but may also want to talk to a live agent, said Mr O'Keeffe.

The technology can be used to blend call centres' telephone services with Internet and database services. Mr O'Keeffe said the technology had "a single system view" of resources across the call centre network, regardless of how the enquiry came in.

Mr Chris Dedicoat, Cisco's vice-president of UK and Ireland operations, said the technology would not be provided on an exclusive basis to Stentor. However, he said the company had the advantage of being first in the market.

Cisco is providing $3.5 million (€3.4 million) in finance to Stentor to buy the equipment. Mr O'Keeffe said the loan was at a competitive rate "in a single figure APR". Mr Dedicoat said Cisco, which employs 26 people in the Republic, provides such financing arrangements to many small companies.