Further, TyCom has reached an agreement with providers of terrestrial network connectivity to extend the reach of TGN. The agreement was signed with Renfe, the Spanish National Railway provider and includes additional connectivity through Euskaltel, a leading carrier in the Basque region of Spain, and Brisatel, the telecom subsidiary of Brisa, the national motorway operator in Portugal. TyCom will utilize the leased dark fiber from Renfe and its collaborators to connect to the other terrestrial and subsea portions of the TGN system, thus providing global broadband connectivity to the major cities on the Iberian Peninsula.
"We are extremely pleased to have achieved these important project milestones in Spain and Portugal," said Ignacio Ugalde, general manager of TyCom's European Fleet Operations Center in Madrid. "Our network buildout in these countries is proceeding smoothly. The cooperation we've received from our partners, as well as local authorities, along with the dedicated efforts of our employees, is making it possible to bring additional broadband capacity to the Iberian Peninsula."
The Madrid sales office is located in TyCom's European Fleet Operations center, which was known as Telecommunicaciones Marinas S.A. (the former marine unit of Telefonica S.A.) until its acquisition by TyCom in 1999. From this office TyCom will support a range of broadband capacity offerings and services for customers in Spain and Portugal. In addition to capacity and system sales, TyCom's Madrid facility is responsible for European and South American marine operations as well as network construction in Spain and Portugal.
"As we move forward with our on-schedule deployment in this part of Europe, we can offer customers a direct link across the Iberian Peninsula to major cities on the Continent, as well as onto our global undersea network," said J. John Johnson, managing director of sales and marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa. "In less than 12 months these two countries will be fully connected to the TyCom Global Network. We look forward to working with local carriers and other companies to meet their broadband capacity needs."
TyCom's TelExchange facilities provide colocation space, power and other services with direct links to the TyCom Global Network, and will be located in Madrid and Barcelona, as well as in Lisbon, Portugal. Each will be based in a facility leased from CarrierHouse, a leading provider of carrier-neutral colocation facilities in Spain and Portugal. Approximately 1,500 square meters of total space is available in the TyCom TelExchange centers in Spain and Portugal. TyCom also has colocation space available at new cable stations in Cabrera de Mar and in the Zamudio Technological Park, a key high-tech center in the Basque region, where construction operations have been underway for some time.
The transatlantic segment of TGN connecting New York and London is now carrying commissioning traffic and will be ready for commercial service this month. Further connectivity to Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt will be completed in July. TyCom's other European networks, interconnecting 16 major cities in more than a dozen countries via the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas, are planned to be ready for service during the second and third quarters of 2002. TyCom's Asia-Pacific networks, which will interconnect eight Asian countries and span the Pacific to link to the rest of the world, are now being deployed and are also on schedule for in-service dates in the second quarter of 2002.