News Releases

08/29/2000

Global Crossing Expands Availability Of Worldwide 2.4 Gb/s Wavelength Services Using Hitachi's Transmux

Aug 29, 2000 08:16 AM

Deployment will provide OC-48/STM-16 wavelength services in major cities throughout the U.S. and between New York and London via undersea cable

ATLANTA, Ga., August 29, 2000 - Hitachi Telecom (USA), Inc., a subsidiary of Hitachi America, Ltd., today announced that Global Crossing Ltd. (NASDAQ:GBLX) will deploy Hitachi's AMN 4100 Transparent Transponder Multiplexer (Transmux) product to provide OC-48c/STM-16 wavelength services to large volume data customers worldwide. Coast-to-coast deployment in more than 150 nodes throughout Global Crossing's North American network will begin in the third quarter of this year.

Global Crossing will also deploy the AMN 4100 in their New York and London undersea cable landing sites. Global Crossing can now flexibly transport large numbers of OC-48/48c/STM-16/16c circuits over its OC-192/STM-64 DWDM backbone worldwide, fully utilizing the 10 Gb/s per channel bandwidth. The carrier is expanding its ability to sell wavelengths - i.e., communication channels - to ISPs and other customers, which need a dedicated communication path at these rates.

When combined with DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexer) equipment, Hitachi's solution offers carriers very large channel counts for OC-12 and OC-48 services. For example, the combination of Transmux with Hitachi's AMN 6100 10 Gb/s DWDM system offers an industry-leading channel capacity of up to 512 OC-48 channels or 2048 OC-12 channels.

"In today's competitive communications services market, we need maximum flexibility, low cost, and the ability to turn up new services immediately," stated Jim Watts, Global Crossing's director of Transmission Engineering for Global Crossing North America. "Hitachi's AMN 4100 Transmux product allows us to fully utilize our OC-192 backbone while offering our customers direct access to OC-12 and OC-48 circuits. Because the Transmux is transparent to communications protocol, the system is ideal for collecting OC-48 ATM and IP traffic, as well as OC-48 SONET traffic for efficient transport over our national network."

"Global Crossing operates the World's most advanced IP network," stated Tom Collington of Global Crossing International. "In addition to maximizing our utilization of bandwidth, Hitachi's Transmux product is ideal as a gateway in a multi-national environment because of its ability to automatically recognize and transmit SDH and SONET signals."

"Hitachi is pleased to support Global Crossing with our unique Transmux product," stated Don Boriskie, Hitachi's vice president of sales. "This revenue-generating solution is an example of Hitachi's commitment to offer products that allow our customers to provide the widest possible variety of services at the most competitive rates while maintaining favorable bottom-line results in this truly global industry."

Hitachi's AMN family of advanced optical networking products is designed to provide carriers with high bandwidth, flexible transport solutions whether the application is SONET, IP, ATM or any other communications protocol. The AMN Product Family provides:

• A complete and flexible system solution for carriers that need to build ultra high capacity backbone networks

• The AMN family is a "premier" 10G system. AMN products are designed for 10G regardless of fiber type, distance, mix of services (protected such as voice & private line; unprotected such as best effort IP), mix of lower speed channels or total channel count.

• Most efficient system (every channel always carries 10G and is fully utilized even when inputs are OC-12 or OC-48).

• Most scaleable system (long-haul to ultra-long-haul; high channel count - channel count remains constant regardless of distance, highest performance available over common fiber types)

Operating under a single element management system for maximum control efficiency, Hitachi's AMN family currently includes the AMN 6100 DWDM system, the AMN 4100 Transmux, and the AMN 5192 next-generation SONET transport system. Hitachi's AMN 5192 10 Gb/s SONET terminals are installed throughout the United States in Global Crossing's North American Crossing backbone Network (the first coast-to-coast OC-192 network).

Hitachi's AMN 6100 DWDM system offers in a single platform the most flexible DWDM system available today. The system provides multiple rate inputs including OC-12, OC-48 and OC-192, channel counts of up to 128 OC-192 channels, 512 OC-48 channels, or 2048 OC-12 channels (or a combination of rates), and ultra-long-haul capabilities. The ability to provide mixed rates - especially large numbers of OC-12 and OC-48 channels - multiplexed onto an OC-192 backbone opens new revenue opportunities for service providers to meet the increasing demands of customers for these bandwidth levels.

Hitachi's next generation AMN 5192 transport system is designed to address a full range of applications from long haul transmission to metropolitan rings. The system supports growth from 10 Gb/s and beyond through Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. Hitachi's products are managed by a common element management system, streamlining the support issues in the increasingly complex network. The four-fiber bi-directional line switched ring configuration provides protection against transport network outages due to a fiber cut or failure at one node. In the event of such a failure, traffic is automatically reversed in direction around the ring within milliseconds. Four-fiber BLSR is generally favored over two-fiber BLSR because of its relative higher capacity and increased reliability offered by the larger number of fibers. Hitachi's AMN 5192 is the only 4F BLSR system to offer a full 20 Gb/s drop capacity per node, and Protection Channel Access, allowing best-effort IP traffic to be carried on the SONET protection channel, effectively boosting the capacity to 40 Gb/s).

Global Crossing Ltd. (NASDAQ: GBLX) is building and offering services over the world's most extensive global IP-based fiber optic network, which will have more than 101,000 route miles, serving five continents, 27 countries and more than 200 major cities. Global Crossing's subsidiary, GlobalCenter Inc., is a leading Internet service company, and its customers own many of the largest and most densely trafficked sites on the Web. Global Crossing's operations are headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda, with principal offices in Los Angeles, California; London, England; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Madison, New Jersey; Rochester, New York; Sunnyvale, California; and Miami, Florida. Visit Global Crossing at www.globalcrossing.com on the Web.

Hitachi Telecom (USA), Inc., a subsidiary of Hitachi America, Ltd., develops, manufactures and markets telecommunications equipment for the U.S. market. The company offers ultra high-speed optical networking equipment such as SONET and DWDM systems, as well as customer premises products such as PBXs. For more information on Hitachi Telecom (USA), Inc., please visit the company's website at www.hitel.com.

Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), markets and manufactures a broad range of electronics, computer systems and products, consumer electronics and semiconductors, and provides industrial equipment and services throughout North America. For more information on Hitachi America, visit http://www.hitachi.us/.

Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1999 (ended March 31, 2000) consolidated sales of 8,001 billion yen ($75.5 billion*). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://www.hitachi.co.jp.

*At an exchange rate of 106 yen to the dollar.

Gerard F. Corbett
Hitachi America, Ltd.
Vice President
Corp. Communications Group
Tel:(650) 244-7900
Fax: (650) 244-7920
gerard.corbett@hal.hitachi.com

Peter Westafer
Hitachi Telecom (USA), Inc.
Tel: (770) 797-2515
pwest@hitel.com

Mary Catharine Moore
Global Crossing
Tel: (716) 777-6403
mary_c_moore@globalcrossing.com

For all other inquiries please call:
1-800-HITACHI

If you have any questions specifically about Investor Relations in the United States, please contact our Investor Relations Department at investor.info@hal.hitachi.com