Global Crossing Ltd. (NYSE: GX) announced the expansion of its data services portfolio (ATM/Frame Relay and Dedicated Internet Access) in eight additional countries across Europe to provide multinational corporations with high-speed data transport services.
Global Crossing's ATM and Frame Relay services, with transport speeds available up to STM-4 (622Mbps), are now available in 18 additional cities in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the UK. Customers can take advantage of a unified platform, allowing for single permanent virtual circuit provisioning, higher quality of service, and a single end-to-end network management system.
Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is expanding into Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the UK. DIA allows customers to browse, publish, and manage critical business applications among employees, partners, and customers over the worldwide Internet with speed and reliability. Running directly over the Global Crossing dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) backbone, businesses will benefit from improved throughput and rapid scalability. Global Crossing's globally deployed Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) capability means customers will experience improved network performance through one-hop connectivity on the Global Crossing backbone. In addition, Global Crossing's extensive private and public peering delivers a congestion-free, high-performance network with worldwide reach.
Through its Managed Services offering, Global Crossing will provide support for installation of customer premise equipment along with proactive monitoring of the equipment and end-to-end network performance. This allows multinational corporations to focus on their core business rather than day-to-day operations of their network.
ATM, Frame Relay and DIA customers can use Global Crossing's secure, customized web portal to monitor their network usage, make service changes, order new services and generate detailed reports. The information can be used to identify usage trends and allocate network resources and bandwidth more efficiently.
Later this year, ATM, Frame Relay and DIA services will also be available in Ireland, Norway, Spain, and Sweden as well as additional regions of the world including Australia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Services will also be available in Asia through our partnership with Asia Global Crossing.
Back in the States, Global Crossing Financial Markets, a unit of Global Crossing Ltd. and provider of global network services and solutions to the financial services community, announced an agreement to provide a managed TCP/IP broadband network to Blackwood Securities' Institutional Trading Services. Blackwood will provide non-biased direct access executions to its customers over the high-speed Global Crossing Financial Extranet.
Blackwood Securities, an agency-only direct access brokerage firm, provides its proprietary trading system and a full-service trading desk to institutional clients for the execution of single order, basket order, index arbitrage and pairs trading.
Global Crossing Financial Markets will provide Blackwood Securities with high-speed communications to efficiently receive and route data and orders. Blackwood uses direct connections to ECNs, exchanges and market makers to offer objective, equal access to all pools of liquidity through advanced electronic trading technologies. Blackwood's advanced order execution algorithms, combined with the speed of Global Crossing Financial Markets' high-performance global Extranet, offer the means to achieve superior trading performance.
About Blackwood Trading:
Headquartered in Wall Street, Blackwood Trading is a software development and trading management company that offers an advanced direct access trading system. For more information, visit www.blackwoodtrading.com.
About Global Crossing:
Global Crossing Ltd. provides integrated telecommunications solutions over the a global IP-based fiber-optic network, providing a full range of managed data and voice products and services. For more information, visit www.globalcrossing.com or www.asiaglobalcrossing.com.