Global Crossing Brings Ethernet WAN to the World

Global Crossing (News - Alert) now offers to enterprise and wholesale customers its EtherSphere family of services – which includes point-to-point, point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-multipoint options – in Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America and the United Kingdom.

 

“Global Crossing’s EtherSphere Ethernet wide area transport solutions give enterprise IT managers a way to globally interconnect their locations in key regions around the world,” says Dave Carey, Global Crossing’s chief marketing officer. “Its genuine, global ubiquity sets our offer apart from the rest of the industry. 

 

The Global Crossing EtherSphere WAN services, which ride over the carrier’s MPLS backbone, are supported by numerous access methods. Through the company’s EtherExtend Flex access service and UK EtherSphere service, enterprises will be able to connect to Ethernet transport services from 150 locations, including nearly 80 Cisco (News - Alert) 7600 series provider edge routers, supporting 26 countries. 

 

Of course, this kind of service can be used to support a wide variety of applications including file sharing, email, document management, enterprise resource planning, and real-time collaboration.

 

“With the launch of EtherSphere, Global Crossing has placed itself in a competitive position for meeting growing demand in the market for international any-to-any Layer 2 Carrier Ethernet services,” said Joel Stradling, senior analyst at Current Analysis (News - Alert). “The operator is hitting the market with a well-designed Ethernet VPLS offer that is enhanced with several features, such as support for up to six CoS, and flexible pricing and bandwidths. The richness in capability combined with strong existing global MPLS reach and know-how make the Global Crossing EtherSphere product range a strong proposition in the market.”

 

According to research firm Ovum (News - Alert), the global Ethernet VPLS market is projected to increase from $1.3 billion in 2008 to $8.4 billion in 2014.