Backbone Carriers

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Global Crossing is our first Tier-1 backbone provider. Global Crossing comes into the building with an OC-48 line and we connect directly to their Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) fiber node with a full-capacity 155 MB/Sec OC-3 fiber-optic line.

Global Crossing Ltd (NASDAQ: GBLX) provides telecommunications solutions over the world’s most advanced global IP-based network. Over the past several years, Global Crossing has been building the foundation for Worldwide Digital Distribution, which radically improves the reliability and speed of the Internet. Their world-class IP-based fiber network reaches 101,000 announced route miles, serving five continents, 27 countries and more than 200 major cities. Its fiber-optic cables run below the surface of the Atlantic and the Pacific, emerging at landing stations along the coasts of North and South America, Europe and Asia. These connect to terrestrial cables, linking major cities around the world.

In addition to the laying of worldwide fiber-optic cables that link continents together, Global Crossing is focusing on providing connectivity on a city-to-city and building-to-building scale. The network is constructed with the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology, allowing for easy expansion and provides an enormous 460 gigabytes-per-second of capacity worldwide. The network features self-healing ring structures, erbium-doped fiber amplifier repeaters and the use of redundant capacity ensures outstanding reliability and service. Global Crossing also has private peering arrangements with 25 other major carriers and high-speed links to eight public exchanges including MAE East and West and several NAPS.

One of Global Crossing's biggest advantages is its high-capacity transmission; another is the fact that it owns its entire worldwide network, which is maintained by a fleet of 17 cable ships on its trans-oceanic links. This gives it more control, more flexibility and more speed. These three factors enable Global Crossing to supply clients with services and capacity in a very short period of time to meet today's explosive growth in bandwidth demand. Global Crossing handles 8.8 billion page views-per-month, translating into 1.8 billion hits-per-day and 1.26 million hits-per-minute.

Global Crossing serves many of the world's largest corporations and high-traffic sites on the web, including Yahoo!, RedHat, The Motley Fool, Ziff Davis, Electronic Arts, Quote.com, USA Today and MP3.com.

In Europe, a number of major carriers, including Swisscom and Cable & Wireless, have entrusted the critical elements of their European networks to Global Crossing through large-scale capacity purchases on the PEC network from Global Crossing. Some of Global Crossing's other carrier customers include Deutsche Telekom, MCI Worldcom, Level 3, Telecom Italia and France Telecom.

Qwest Communications is our second Tier-1 backbone provider. Qwest comes into the building with an OC-48 line and we connect directly to their ATM fiber node with a full-capacity 155 MB/Sec OC-3 fiber-optic line. Our Qwest connection enables us to offer additional redundancy and better routes to Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Qwest Communications, Inc. (NYSE: Q) is a global leader in broadband Internet-based communications, with one of the largest, most technologically advanced networks available today reaching 104,000 route miles around the world. Qwest has revenues of $19 billion a year and serves more than 30 million customers in the United States and abroad with key alliances with companies like Microsoft and IBM.

Qwest Communications Inc. began in 1995 and realized early on that the Internet would create unseen demands that existing networks simply could not meet, Qwest set out to build a whole new kind of network - faster, more flexible and more robust than any other network. The Qwest Macro Capacity® Fiber Network employs the most advanced backbone infrastructure available in the industry, and their OC-192 IP network delivers the bandwidth, speed and reliability needed to service multi-national corporations. Being one of the largest and most robust networks, it is enabling new technologies, services and solutions that benefit businesses and consumers worldwide. Designed with state-of-the-art fiber and optical networking equipment, the Qwest network has the capacity to send multimedia content - data, images and video - as seamlessly as voice. The Qwest network offers 10 gigabit, OC-192 speed and is constructed on a self-healing SONET ring and 2.4 gigabit (OC-48) IP architecture.

In the United States, the Qwest network reaches a distance of 18,815 miles, connecting 150 cities across the country and extending 1,400 miles into Mexico. Cables under the Atlantic Ocean connect to Europe, where they are joined with KPN, the Dutch Telecommunications Company, in a joint venture. KPNQwest has built a 9,100 mile European network that connects to more than 40 cities. Qwest is also part owner of the newest digital cables in Europe, TAT 14, which connects to the KPNQwest network. Qwest has a foothold in Asia through an Asia-Pacific office and interests in the US-Japan Cable project.

Qwest recently set a land speed record by carrying live commercial traffic over an OC-768 (40 GB/Sec) connection at speeds four times faster than any existing commercial network over the longest distance - 435 miles (700 kilometers).

AT&T is our third Tier-1 backbone provider. AT&T comes into the building with an OC-48 line and we connect directly to their ATM fiber node with a full-capacity 155 MB/Sec OC-3 fiber-optic line.

AT&T Corporation (NYSE: T) is among the world's premier voice, video and data communications companies, serving consumers, businesses and government. AT&T has annual revenues of nearly $66 billion and 162,000 employees and provides services to customers worldwide.

AT&T runs the world's largest, most sophisticated communications network, is the largest cable operator in the United States and has one of the largest digital wireless networks in North America. AT&T is a leading supplier of data and Internet services for businesses and offers outsourcing, consulting and networking-integration to large businesses. AT&T jumped into the backbone business in 1998, when it agreed to pay $5 billion for IBM's global IP network. The deal instantly gave AT&T the worldwide data network it needed.

When it comes to worldwide connectivity, the AT&T global network provides industry-leading global coverage and world-class Service Level Agreements. The AT&T global network has more than 2000 points of presence, nodes and gateways in more than 52 countries around the world. In the United States, it runs on a coast-to-coast OC-192 (10 GB/Sec) backbone with 80 regional SONET rings, connected to 21 major market hubs by OC-48 (2.5 GB/Sec) and 100 more by OC-3 (155 MB/Sec).