FLORHAM PARK, N.J., Oct. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Global Crossing , a leading global IP solutions provider, today announced it has once again broadened the scope and reach of its Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services for customers around the world by extending its Global Crossing VoIP Local Service(TM) to 16 major metropolitan cities in Mexico and nearly 400 additional cities in the United States. The addition of Mexico brings to 21 the total number of countries worldwide where the service is offered. In the U.S., the company expanded availability of VoIP Local Service to nearly 400 additional cities, including Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Tucson, bringing that total to more than 1,400 nationwide.
Initially, Global Crossing will be serving 16 metropolitan markets in Mexico with VoIP Local Service, including Mexico City, Guadalajara, Puebla, Leon and Monterrey. Global Crossing VoIP Local Service also is available in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. A complementary offer, Global Crossing VoIP Outbound(TM), is available from 29 countries around the world and provides the consistency customers require from global services.
"Mexico is an important growth market for Global Crossing, and customers are clamoring for convenient, feature-rich local VoIP services," said Al DiGabriele, vice president of network applications services. "Global Crossing continues to expand the reach of this critical capability into key markets across the world. We'll continue to use our secure, reliable global IP network to support multinational customers -- and the carriers that serve them -- in need of these essential business applications."
"The geographic expansion of Global Crossing VoIP Local Service in the U.S. and Mexico further demonstrates Global Crossing's strong position as a global VoIP provider to both the carrier and enterprise market," stated Will Stofega, senior analyst at IDC. "We're still at the tip of the iceberg with the uptake of VoIP services in this market of projected double-digit growth."
IDC estimates 63 percent growth from 2005 to 2011 in IP trunking services in the U.S. market, which is indicative of the significant growth opportunities across the various categories of carrier and enterprise VoIP services.
Global Crossing VoIP Local Service is an inbound local service that provides nationwide Direct Inward Dialing/Direct Dial Inward functionality through a single IP interconnection. The service lets customers originate traffic on the public switched telephone network in different countries. Traffic is then converted to VoIP on Global Crossing's network and delivered to the customer's IP network. VoIP Local Service also can eliminate traditional time division multiplexing, private line and foreign exchange service fees by providing a single IP connection to serve multiple markets.
Global Crossing's global, fully meshed MPLS-based network ensures that VoIP calls are delivered with minimal latency, packet loss and jitter -- a consistent and predictable call quality not possible with voice services based on public Internet transport. More than 1.3 billion IP interconnected minutes per quarter are processed on Global Crossing's voice backbone network, or VoIP core. This represents a 73 percent year-over-year increase from the third quarter of 2006 to the same period in 2007. IP interconnected minutes now represent 21 percent of total minutes on Global Crossing's VoIP backbone.