Hong Kong - July 22, 1999
MCI WorldCom Asia Pacific today announced a major expansion and upgrade of its Asia Pacific network control and service facilities centre in Hong Kong. The facility, called the Asia Pacific World Centre, is one of the three MCI WorldCom network master control centres that ensure seamless, reliable network service around the globe. This expansion reflects MCI WorldCom's rapid growth in Asia Pacific over the past two years, which includes building wholly-owned fibre optic metropolitan networks through Tokyo and Sydney.
With the Asia Pacific World Centre in Hong Kong, MCI WorldCom international customers are virtually supported from all corners of the world with custom-specific regional support. The centre provides one-stop event resolution and network management of Internet, data, and voice traffic across Asia Pacific.
The centre provides 24X7 monitoring of over 65,000 kilometers of international undersea cable, US and European cable systems and the metropolitan networks in Asia Pacific. That means 300 Mbps of traffic or the equivalent of about five million voice calls are monitored at any one time by the high capacity network system.
The state-of-the-art facility offers a range of network management and co-location, or facilities management services for MCI WorldCom's Asia Pacific customers. The World Centre also provides round the clock support in six languages: Cantonese, English, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and Tagalog.
"The expansion of this facility reflects the unique capacity of MCI WorldCom to support business customers on a worldwide basis as well as ensure the same global standards for Asia Pacific traffic on our network," said William Barney, President of MCI WorldCom Asia Pacific. "In line with our local-global-local strategy, this Asia Pacific network control centre is manned by people that represent the region," Mr. Barney added.
In order to cater to the exacting telecom requirements of MCI WorldCom's business customers, the centre is fully self-supporting with an integrated uninterruptible power supply, diesel generators, automatic restoration cabling and state-of-the-art security.
The centre can respond within five minutes to any transmission problem anywhere in the world using an integrated network monitoring system that provides operators with a single interface to all transmission and switching subsystems. MCI WorldCom's advanced technology examines several layers of its system to find faults and normalise the network before customers perceive a problem. The Asia Pacific World Centre supports local operations centres in Japan, Singapore, Korea and Australia and provides additional redundancy to the local management and control systems. This centre is linked to MCI WorldCom's two other global network control centres in Europe (Amsterdam) and the U.S. (North Carolina) assuring truly global network management.
The Asia Pacific World Centre in Hong Kong brings together the following functions:
management, control, repair and maintenance of the company's Asia Pacific long-distance, fibre-optic transmission network and its connectivity to the Americas and European networks;
the Asia Pacific arm of Global Data Network Operations responsible for the proactive monitoring and enhancement of the MCI WorldCom Frame Relay and ATM network facilities;
management and control of MCI WorldCom's Asia Pacific switched voice network;
the Asia Pacific arm of the Global Customer Service function providing front-line support of the company's customers globally.
"The centre's equipment adheres to our very stringent global technical standards," said Clinton Rowe, Director of Network Services, MCI WorldCom Asia Pacific. "This network control facility represents the leading edge in managing both the physical and virtual elements of a telecommunications network. Telecommunications is mission-critical for our clients and the World Centre gives them the added assurance that our on-line back-up systems keep their business moving."
As a new breed of telecommunications company, MCI WorldCom's global strategy is to lay its own fibre optic cable door-to-door, where the regulatory environment permits. This strategy gives MCI WorldCom enhanced control over its entire network, allowing the company to provide its customers with a fully managed end-to-end solution for all of their Internet, data and voice traffic -- locally, nationally and internationally.
MCI WorldCom is a global leader in communications services with 1998 revenue of more than $30 billion and established operations in over 65 countries in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific regions. MCI WorldCom is a premier provider of facilities-based and fully integrated local, long distance, international and Internet services. MCI WorldCom's global networks, including its transoceanic cable systems provide end-to-end high-capacity connectivity to more than 40,000 buildings worldwide. MCI WorldCom is traded on NASDAQ under WCOM. MCI WorldCom's international growth is projected at 40 percent annually. The company currently has a presence in 12 countries in Asia, including wholly-owned fibre optic networks in Australia and Japan. MCI WorldCom is the lead partner in the Japan-US undersea cable and a partner in the Southern Cross cable system that links Australia, New Zealand and the US.
