Global Crossing has once again broadened the scope and reach of its VoIP services for customers around the world by extending its Global Crossing VoIP Local Service to six more European countries and three in Latin America. The addition of Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Peru, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland brings to 20 the total number of countries worldwide where the service is offered.

The newly available VoIP Local Service offering complements the existing suite of VoIP Outbound and converged IP services in these markets. VoIP Local Service also is available in Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Global Crossing VoIP Outbound services are available from 29 countries around the world and provide the consistency customers require from global services.

"The UK is a critical growth market for Global Crossing. Customers are asking for increased functionality for local applications that fits seamlessly with our global footprint," said Anthony Christie, Global Crossing's managing director, UK and Europe. "As we extend our VoIP footprint deeper into the UK and continental Europe, we're delivering that functionality -- along with the security, reliability and network coverage of Global Crossing's high-quality, global IP network."

With its new emergency calling services in the UK, Global Crossing will provide call routing and associated information, including trace back and call identification, via 999 or 112 to emergency service operators, so they can correctly identify the caller's registered location to emergency services personnel.

"These latest enhancements to Global Crossing VoIP Local Services in the UK provide significant benefits to customers in terms of convenience, quality and feature-rich services," said Camille Mendler, vice president of enterprise research at Yankee Group. "Global Crossing continues to be in the forefront of innovation and voice quality with its suite of global VoIP services, as it expands its reach into key markets across the world to support multinational customers."

In addition, Global Crossing's standard Local Services offer in the UK now includes local number portability. This lets telephone subscribers retain their phone numbers when they switch local carriers, avoiding the cost and inconvenience associated with changing to a new number.

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. The traffic is then converted to VoIP on Global Crossing's network and then delivered to the customer's IP network. VoIP Local Service eliminates 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. Global Crossing's VoIP platform carried more than 30 billion minutes of use during 2006, positioning the company as a leader in global IP communications.