Global Crossing Adds EtherExtend Flex Locations

Global Crossing Ltd. (GLBC) announced Wednesday that 26 EtherExtend Flex Service locations now are “service-ready” with the recent additions of Houston, Sunnyvale, Singapore and Frankfurt.

The service will be available in more than 70 PoPs in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America by the end of 2009.

Other sites where the service is available are Hong Kong in Asia; Amsterdam, London, Milan and Paris in Europe; Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. in the United States, and Toronto, Canada.

Introduced in January, Global Crossing EtherExtend Flex Service provides Ethernet access to IP-based services. It provides a last-mile Ethernet connection to Global Crossing’s end-user customer via logical connections over a physical network-to-network interface (NNI) with the access provider, rather than forwarding the customer’s traffic over a fixed physical connection to Global Crossing.

“The ongoing rollout of EtherExtend Flex to 70 locations around the world confirms Global Crossing as a global Ethernet service provider,” stated David Hold, senior analyst at Current Analysis. “EtherExtend Flex offers enterprises a cost-effective access alternative for Internet and IP VPN services – including Global Crossing’s suite of IP services – employing rate limiting functionality on Ethernet virtual circuits to carve out just the amount of bandwidth a customer needs.”

According to Nemertes Research Spring 2009 benchmark research, 39 percent of enterprises look to Ethernet as a local loop for access to MPLS-based services.

EtherExtend Flex can be paired with Global Crossing IP VPN or dedicated internet access/IP transit services, whether managed or unmanaged. The service also can support collaboration, VoIP and other applications that utilize these transport services.