Costa Rica’s New Fiber-Optic Submarine Cable

CINDE announced Global Crossing Inaugurates Submarine Cable in Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast

Esterillos, Costa Rica – July 18, 2008: Global Crossing (NASDAQ: GLBC), a global IP solutions provider, today announced the lighting of its new fiber-optic submarine cable in Esterillos of Parrita, Puntarenas.

Global Crossing; Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), the state-run entity responsible for Costa Rica’s telecommunications; and the Radiográfica Costarricense S.A. (RACSA) hosted a ceremony yesterday at the new Unqui cable station in the town of Esterillos where Costa Rican President Oscar Arias along with executives from Global Crossing, ICE and RACSA were present to launch the new system.

This much anticipated fiber-optic submarine cable will facilitate the expansion of ICE’s international network to the rest of the world through Global Crossing’s network, allowing Costa Rica to increase reliability of its international telecommunications and strengthen the country’s competitiveness, not only within Latin America, but on a worldwide scale.

The new cable connection is an extension of the Pan American Crossing (PAC), which connects the United States’ west coast, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela and the Virgin Islands, in addition to the east coast of the United States, South America, Europe and Asia, via Global Crossing’s other underwater cable systems.

With the new Global Crossing connection, Costa Rica will benefit from the security, reliability and global reach of Global Crossing’s high-quality IP network.

• Project will attract more high technology investments to country.
• Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias to attend inauguration.

Additionally, this joint project provides ICE with a reliable international network infrastructure on both coasts, supporting the exponential growth of Internet traffic and transport of mission critical IP business applications in the region.

ICE’s capacity to transport international traffic will increase, as will the possibilities for businesses in the region. As an example, the new bandwidth enables the transmission of approximately 185 million e-mails per second, assuming an average e-mail of 20KB; allows 2.5 million people to watch a video online, assuming 1.5M per connection; and can handle 60 million phone calls.

Global Crossing’s branch reaching Costa Rica has a design capacity of 256 STM1 equivalents, allowing for future increases in capacity as ICE’s service requirements grow.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.