Global Crossing announced today an expansion of its enterprise service in Brazil with the launch of its Direct Dial Services (DDS). The announcement bolsters Global Crossing's voice services portfolio in Latin America, building upon the introduction of Direct Dial services to Argentina and Chile earlier this year in conjunction with other data and Internet service offers.
Direct Dial Services deliver high-quality international long distance voice services to more than 240 destinations worldwide and are backed by industry-leading voice service level agreements (SLAs) and a unique customer satisfaction guarantee.
"Expansion of DDS to Brazil demonstrates our commitment to offer the most advanced and secure telecommunications solutions in Latin America and worldwide," said Jose Antonio Rios, Global Crossing's international president and CAO. "Using our global IP network, Global Crossing voice services bring to market unmatched clarity and network reliability, backed by world class customer support."
Direct Dial Services' unique "any distance" pricing offers customers the same low price per minute to call a given country from any one of the countries in which Global Crossing provides international calling. For example, a call to the United States from Brazil or Chile would carry the same per-minute rate. "Any distance" pricing permits global enterprises connected to the Global Crossing network to manage their telecom costs across multiple countries with a stable and competitive pricing structure, on telecom management expenditures.
The voice SLAs, which apply to Global Crossing's dedicated retail voice services, support three key areas: end-to-end network availability of 99.9 percent, guaranteed time of installation, and mean time to restore (MTTR). The satisfaction guarantee allows customers to exit contracts if service falters. Global Crossing received its Multimedia Communications Service license from Anatel in December 2002, which permits Global Crossing to market voice services in Brazil in conjunction with other data and Internet services.
Global Crossing voice services are supported by a global customer care team offering multilingual, 24 x 7 support for ordering, provisioning, billing, and additionally, a local single-point-of-contact on account management. With uCommandâ, Global Crossing's secure, private Web-based network management tool, customers can monitor their voice services, create utilization reports, reroute traffic, order new services, and create and track trouble tickets and bill payment.
Voice traffic is routed over Global Crossing's worldwide fiber optic network using either packet-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or conventional Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) technology, based on most efficient route available. Both platforms are fully interoperable.
With more than 60 voice switches worldwide, Global Crossing's network is currently carrying more than five billion VOIP and TDM minutes monthly, providing high quality, cost-effective, and reliable solutions. The VoIP platform alone carries over one billion minutes per month. VoIP traffic transits Global Crossing's secure, private core network, rather than the public Internet, and therefore is unaffected by public Internet delays and congestion.
All of Global Crossing's voice and data services are delivered via its worldwide IP network, which provides connectivity to 200 cities in more than 27 countries. In Latin America, DDS is also available in Chile and Argentina. In continental Europe, DDS is available in Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium and Ireland. In the Nordics, DDS is available in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands; and in North America, in the United States and Canada.
