[WORLDCOM TURNS UP FIRST PAN-EUROPEAN NETWORK COMBINING LOCAL AND LONG DISTANCE]
* Creates first facilities-based pan-European telecom company.
* Completes core of the end-to-end managed global network strategy.
* Meeting Europe's terabit demand for bandwidth, today.
AMSTERDAM, BRUSSELS, FRANKFURT, LONDON, NEW YORK and PARIS, July 20 /PRNewswire/ -- WorldCom, Inc. today announced its pan-European fibre-optic network is operational and new high-bandwidth services - including the world's first building to building, on-net, international ATM service - is commercially available. The 2,000-mile long distance network connects existing WorldCom city networks in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Frankfurt. Together with the Gemini transatlantic cable system and the company's existing US local and long distance networks, over 27,000 office buildings in the US and 4,000 buildings in Europe are now connected by a single seamless, high capacity fibre-optic network.
"The European network is the centrepiece of WorldCom's strategy to be the world's premier provider of telecom services over its own facilities, owned and managed end-to-end," said John Sidgmore, chief operations officer at WorldCom, Inc. "No other company can match our ability to offer customers a combined local/global, full function telecom and Internet service in the multinational dimension. We are the first and only company to attain the goal of a local-global-local service - and it's delivered over our own networks and managed by our own people," he said.
"Real" ATM
The new services available over the network include the first, real international Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) service. Unlike any other international service on the market, the WorldCom service provides full ATM functionality at bandwidths between 2Mbps and 45Mbps with a common feature set, over a common technology platform with full end-to-end management and control. The service is priced to provide an effective migration path for existing Frame Relay customers toward broadband networking speeds and functionality.
New Class of International Circuits
This new network also enables building-to-building private circuits of STM-1 (155Mbps) and DS3 (45Mbps). These high capacity circuits, hitherto the domain of the wholesale telecommunications carrier market, are available on a retail basis. These new on- net circuits, as well as the more traditional E1 (2Mbps) and fractional E1 circuits, will be the first in Europe to be provisioned by a single company over a single network end-to-end. Previously such circuits would be provisioned by up to four different organisations with multiple interconnect points that are subject to network management and cost overhead.
A Value Revolution
As a result of this single network infrastructure, WorldCom is able to revolutionise the value to customers of their international telecommunications by pricing both on-net international private circuits and the ATM services independent of origin and destination. Paris to London is priced the same as Paris to Frankfurt, Amsterdam to London etc. etc. The arcane and arbitrary traditional methods of settling international telecoms pricing between incumbent monopoly PTTs has meant that circuits of equal distance, but crossing different international boundaries, could vary in price by up to five times. WorldCom's on-net circuits offer further exceptional value as they are provisioned over a fully resilient SDH network, eliminating the requirement for additional, diverse route circuits.
"We have just killed the idea that intra-European traffic is an international market in the traditional sense," said John Sidgmore. "Since the EC launched its farsighted, regional liberalisation program, WorldCom has looked at the European market opportunity in the same way that we have looked at the US long distance market. Now our customers can buy that vision!"
A Major Infrastructure Project for the Terabit Age
WorldCom's pan-European fibre optic network is a major telecommunications infrastructure project. Excluding the fibre optic cable already installed as metropolitan area networks (MANs) in the on-net cities, the pan-European network comprises 2,000 route miles of fibre-optic cable, multiple repeater and regenerating stations and two submarine crossings of the English Channel. The network is a series of fully resilient, fibre-optic, Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) loops that support multiple 2.5 gigabit channels per fibre pair using wave division multiplexing (WDM) and optical amplifiers. The current configuration provides 40 gigabits per second capacity.
WDM technology will support a capacity in the 10s of gigabits per fibre pair and allow for rapid installation of additional capacity as customer demands increase. Furthermore critical sections of the network, including the submarine legs, are provisioned with 48 fibre cables enabling the entire system to be readily upgraded to terabit (1,000 gigabits per second) capacity as demand grows. Gemini Submarine Cable Network is also a WDM-enabled SDH system currently providing 40 gigabits capacity between New York and London.
Network management is provided by a hierarchy of management centres. The pan-European network is controlled by the International Network Operations and Control Centre (INOCC) in Amsterdam. The INOCC has "visibility" of the entire long distance network including services provided by Gemini and the US networks while each city's Local Operations and Control Centre (LOCC) provides immediate support to local customers. This control centre hierarchy enhances network performance, resilience and customer support. The capability exists for each control centre to have complete end-to-end visibility and management of a circuit at customer premise equipment level. |
