Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC), which is in the midst of being acquired by Level 3 Communications (Nasdaq: LVLT), is expanding its EthernetSphere Virtual Private LAN services to over 40 new sites in the U.S., Europe and Asia by the end of the year.
Set on gaining a larger piece of the multisite business customer, Global Crossing's multipoint and point-to-point EtherSphere service (VPLS E-LAN, Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) and E-LINE), are being used by wholesale carrier and business customers for various applications, including center interconnection and remote locations in addition to connecting remote locations of larger businesses.
A big piece of the new EtherSphere offering is flexibility. Supported by six Classes of Service (CoS) and a usage-based billing component to accommodate unpredictable bandwidth use spikes, enterprise or wholesale customers can choose from bandwidth speeds from as low as 1 Mbps to 2 Gbps.
In North America and Europe, Global Crossing will expand its EtherSphere presence in its points of presence (PoPs), while in China it will work with carrier partner CITIC Telecom CPC Limited (formerly CPCNet to provide EtherSphere Layer 2 VPLS services to Chinese business parks.
Sticking to its converged service strategy, EtherExtend can be used as a foundation to carry other services, including IP Virtual Private Network (IP VPN), Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Voice over IP (VoIP) and Communications as a Service (CaaS).
While there's no direct connection to its impending marriage with Level 3, Global Crossing's move to expand its EtherSphere presence could be another tool that Level 3 will have in its tool chest to target new direct enterprise sales and wholesale opportunities through its own new Wholesale Partner Program it launched this week.
For more:
- see the release
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