January 26, 1999
Global Crossing and Lucent Technologies Reach Broad Agreement
-- Agreement includes access to the most advanced optic technologies from Lucent and Bell Labs
-- Contract includes optical fiber and system equipment for Pan-European Crossing
HAMILTON, Bermuda, Jan. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Crossing Ltd. (Nasdaq: GBLX) and Lucent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: LU) today announced that they have signed an agreement that provides Global Crossing with extensive access to the most advanced technologies available from Lucent for both terrestrial and undersea fiber optic systems. The agreement also provides for financing for future systems, if Lucent is selected as contractor, under mutually acceptable terms.
The companies also said that Lucent has been awarded a contract for fiber and equipment for the Pan-European Crossing (PEC) segment of Global Crossing's planned worldwide network. As part of the contract, Lucent will provide financing for the PEC.
"The deregulation of global markets, advances in telecommunications, and the explosive growth of the Internet are creating enormous demand for bandwidth," said Jack Scanlon, Global Crossing's chief executive officer. "Global Crossing is satisfying that demand by connecting 100 cities with the world's first high-capacity fiber-optic global network."
Under the agreement announced today, Global Crossing will be among the first to deploy new optical technologies developed at Bell Labs. In addition, Lucent will assist Global Crossing in technology planning and selection and will support the initial deployment of new technologies.
Harry Bosco, the chief operating officer of Lucent's Optical Networking Group, will become a member of Global Crossing's Technical Advisory Committee.
"By entering into this technology cooperation agreement with Lucent," said Global Crossing President David Lee, "Global Crossing will have access to Bell Labs' latest optical network technology and will work with Lucent to develop other breakthrough products to be used in our global network.
"We will be in a position to continually offer our customers the latest and best technology available, and we will be working with Lucent's experts to build superior networks and thus provide state-of-the-art service to our customers."
"This combination of Lucent's technological strength and Global Crossing's worldwide reach will give service providers access to enormous bandwidth with outstanding service," said Dan Stanzione, chief operating officer of Lucent Technologies. "We're excited to be working with this new class of communications company as it builds the first independent terrestrial optical fiber network to cover all of Europe."
Under the PEC contract, Lucent will supply Global Crossing with its industry-leading fiber and optical network systems, such as Lucent's 80- channel WaveStar(TM) OLS 400G dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) systems and the WaveStar(TM) BandWidth Manager. Also included under the contract is Lucent's TrueWave(R) RS (reduced slope) optical fiber.
"Lucent continues to make great strides in Europe and our relationship with Global Crossing is another way we are bringing high-capacity, highly reliable, and technologically advanced networks to service providers in this region and around the world," said Eric van Amerongen, president and CEO of Lucent Technologies' Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
Last year, Lucent announced its WaveStar OLS 400G, which delivers up to 400 gigabits per second over up to 80 channels. The WaveStar BandWidth Manager takes bandwidth a step further by addressing another critical need of network providers -- how to expeditiously route the faster, more sophisticated and more varied traffic these higher-capacity networks will require.
Lucent's TrueWave RS fiber represents the next generation in fiber optics, giving long-distance providers increased capacity and a solution for emerging high-speed DWDM systems.
Global Crossing has begun construction of the Pan-European Crossing network and has previously announced the acquisition of rights-of-way for that project. In the year 2000, PEC will interconnect the 18 major commercial centers of Europe, through one of the highest capacity networks in Europe, with up to 144 fibers over 8,200 route kilometers. Through Atlantic Crossing (AC-1), these European cities will also receive seamless access to Global Crossing's global network. PEC is being developed in several phases, initially providing connectivity in 1999 among 13 cities: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Hamburg, Hanover, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Strasbourg and Copenhagen. In the year 2000, planned expansions to the network will connect Lyon, Marseilles, Turin, Milan and Zurich. Beyond 2000, later additions will connect Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart and Vienna.
Global Crossing also has projects underway to construct undersea optical fiber communication systems interconnecting Asia and Latin America to the United States and Europe, as well as a terrestrial network in Japan.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communication systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Laboratories is the research and development arm for the company.
Global Crossing is developing the world's first independent high-capacity global fiber-optic network.
The Global Crossing network is being built to connect 100 of the top telecommunications cities in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. |
