March 11, 2005 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Global Crossing today announced an upgrade to its 10,000-km UK backbone that paves the way for
an eight-fold increase in core network capacity. This additional bandwidth will support the introduction of new services and the migration of existing managed service customers to a converged IP environment. Upgrade of the UK core network supports managed IP services to the government, rail and enterprise sectors. In the government sector alone, Global Crossing delivers services to more than 116,000 users in 100 departments.
Global Crossing has contracted Lucent Technologies to implement the new dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) core based on the LambdaUnite(R) Multi-Service Switch (MSS) and the Navis(R) Optical Management System (OMS).
This will raise the potential capacity of each of the seven core nodes to 320 Gbps, with the capability of supporting 40 10-Gbps channels on any route. The new UK core will interconnect with Global Crossing's international optical transmission network, allowing for seamless global service delivery. The network upgrade is scheduled for completion during the second quarter of 2005.
"We take pride in being the first to deploy this world-leading technology in the UK. This carefully targeted investment in our core network assets is in line with the growth we expect from the UK business," said Phil Metcalf, managing director of Global Crossing UK. "This will improve our competitive position by driving down the cost of transport, while boosting network capacity, performance and reliability."
The upgrade to the core network enables the delivery of high bandwidth managed services. The UK network has been designed to support managed services and the additional capacity will make it possible to satisfy the growing demand from enterprises for access speeds in the range of two to 34 Mbps.
In the government sector, Global Crossing's Managed Telecommunications Services (Mts) give users access to a suite of IP-enabled services, ultimately leading to full convergence over a highly secure, segregated IP VPN. Mts is one of the largest private managed networks in Europe, handling in excess of 20 million voice calls a month. In the rail sector, Global Crossing has extensive experience as a provider of managed voice and data services. The network upgrade will support the delivery of IP-enabled telephony services to 65,000 users of Railnet, a fully managed voice private network.
Global Crossing's 10,000 route-kilometer network extends to within two km of 64 percent of the UK's business population via 156 points of presence, and uses approximately 50 Partial Private Circuit interconnects with BT to reach those customers that are not directly on-net. Global Crossing's multiple voice interconnects with BT mean that 95 percent of voice traffic is handed off at the lowest single tandem rates.
The LambdaUnite network makes it cost-effective to inject large amounts of capacity to meet the increasing trend in customers requesting higher bandwidth services, overcoming any potential issues with network congestion and freeing capacity in the SDH access network.
LambdaUnite MSS is a next-generation optical transport system that bridges traffic between data-intensive metro networks and high-speed optical core networks, connecting cities, campuses and corporate networks to larger, long- haul public networks. It enables service providers to seamlessly upgrade their networks and allows them to deliver new value-added services such as Gigabit Ethernet. The compact size and low energy requirements of LambdaUnite MSS also mean operators can achieve significant cost savings compared to traditional systems.
