Global Crossing, has made advances to meet the burgeoning demand for IP communications in Europe by expanding its infrastructure and IP services to more countries. Global Crossing's IP traffic growth is out-pacing the industry and is on track to more than double in 2006, fueled by the worldwide demand for high bandwidth connections to its IP network.

According to Gartner, the VoIP enterprise market in Western Europe is projected to grow to $3.1 billion by 2010, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.8 percent from 2005 to 2010 ("Forecast: Fixed Public Network Services, Worldwide," Wm. L. Hahn and Alex Winogradoff, August 2006).

By September 2006, IP interconnected Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic in Europe traversing Global Crossing's global IP backbone had increased by more than six million minutes per month from the previous year. Worldwide, Global Crossing's VoIP platform currently carries more than 2.5 billion minutes per month - which is more than 80 percent of all its voice traffic.

Global Crossing has ramped up organic growth in the region with a significant expansion of IP access points, bringing the company's Multi- Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) IP-based network closer to customers in a highly cost-effective manner. Global Crossing's MPLS network delivers state- of-the-art global IP solutions, with direct access to more than 600 cities in 60 countries.

"By expanding our European network, we're giving carriers and enterprises more economical options as they move to a converged IP solution," said Anthony Christie, Global Crossing's chief marketing officer. "We continue to be very committed to expanding the geographic reach of innovative IP services, such as VoIP. We believe that enhanced service offerings - provided on a secure, reliable, high-quality IP network - deliver an invaluable business resource to our customers."

Global Crossing is an industry leader in the deployment of 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE) Points of Presence (PoPs) worldwide, and has implemented an IP Supercore platform supporting the increasing demand for high bandwidth IP services. The company has deployed 10GigE PoPs across Europe in Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Global Crossing also has added more capacity to support the growth of VoIP traffic in Europe by expanding its Session Border Controller (SBC) pairs in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Since October 2005, Global Crossing has seen 500 percent growth in customer connectivity to the Amsterdam SBC, necessitating the additional capacity.

Global Crossing is experiencing growth in excess of 200 percent on its IP VPN services worldwide as well, and has expanded the number of IP VPN service PoPs by more than 40 percent, including new deployments in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Global Crossing also is expanding its network in the UK and Frankfurt via the recent acquisition of Fibernet to better serve the future requirements of customers with its newly enhanced portfolio of innovative IP solutions. Global Crossing is rapidly integrating Fibernet's business into its European operations, utilizing Fibernet's fiber ring in Frankfurt and a new group of telehouses for VoIP interconnection.

As announced in September, Global Crossing has expanded its IP services in Europe, making its VoIP Outbound Service available in Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia. VoIP Outbound Service had already been available in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Global Crossing also announced the availability of intra-country dialing in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway and Sweden. The service had already been available in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.