Research At The Speed Of Light

Press Release

New 10 Gigabit network win for COLT Telecom

5 July 2001 - Academics and researchers across Europe will now be able to work faster and more efficiently as a result of a multi-million Euro deal signed today between Cambridge-based DANTE, on behalf of the Consortium of European Research networks, and COLT Telecom Group to create the most powerful research network in the world. DANTE operates an extensive and high-powered Research Internet that connects university research networks in 25 countries, providing a platform to allow researchers of all disciplines to share information, run high-capacity programmes across multiple sites and co-operate on joint research in a wide range of disciplines including telecommunications.

The new network, called GÉANT, will facilitate innovative approaches to research in topics such as weather forecasting, high-energy physics and telecommunications networking itself. It will enable researchers geographically distributed across Europe to co-operate with one another as if they were in the same laboratory. This is a direct result of the significant increase in the power and transmission capacity of the network.

To meet this requirement, DANTE has taken a major step forward with the purchase from COLT of a number of 10 & 2.5 Gigabit wavelength lines. These will be incorporated in a new super fast backbone interconnecting 31 countries of Europe, thus connecting the greatest number of researchers in the world.

Dai Davies, DANTE General Manager stated ”this new infrastructure will allow us to offer speeds of transmission previously impossible on the old network. As well as increasing the efficiency of our research partners and offering significant savings in communication costs, GÉANT will open up a host of new possibilities for co-operation and sharing. Areas such as remote learning and computational networks require the sort of bandwidth capacity that this new network will be able to provide. This is a very significant contract for DANTE and we are pleased that the combination of the COLT robust and proven network, geographic coverage and cost-effective solutions have enabled them to play a key role in delivering what must be 2 the most powerful 10 Gigabit research network in the world, with the broadest geographic coverage.”

For COLT, this significant new win further boosts their reputation as one of the leading telecoms companies in Europe and constitutes a demonstration of their ability to run high quality networks of the highest speed. Peter Manning, COLT President and CEO added “ 10 Gigabit lines are at the leading edge of technology, and it is a testament to our core company values of quality and reliability that DANTE have selected COLT to provide them with a next generation network”

Note : A 10 Gigabit line is about 160 thousand times more powerful than a standard domestic phone line and able to handle many millions of emails a second…

About COLT:

COLT Telecom Group plc is a leading provider of high bandwidth data, voice and advanced telecommunication services to business and governmental customers in Europe. It currently has operations in 27 European cities in eleven countries, and plans to be providing services in 32 cities by the end of 2001. In addition COLT provides Internet connectivity, Internet hosting and enables application services in 10 European countries, with a backbone reaching into the US and more than 450 peering agreements. COLT Internet Solution Centres (ISCs) have been built in 13 cities totalling more that 800,000 square feet (74,000 square metres) of hosting space. During the year ended December 2000, COLT’s turnover was £640.8 million and it carried 15.8 billion switched minutes of
traffic. During the quarter ended March 2001, COLT's turnover was £209.4 million. At March 31, 2001, COLT had installed 3,442 route kilometres of fibre-optic cables in its city-networks, provided 10.2 million private wire voice grade equivalents, and had 6,298 buildings connected to its networks. COLT Telecom Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (CTM.L) and Nasdaq (COLT). Further Information about COLT and its products can be found on the World Wide Web
at www.colt-telecom.com

About DANTE:

Since its creation in 1993, DANTE has been responsible for four consecutive generations of European research networks, and is active in the ongoing development of European research networking. DANTE is owned by a number of European research networks and has "Research Association" status in the UK. It plans, builds and manages international networking services on their behalf. The pan-European research network enables European scientists to compete on an international stage by providing them with a world-class backbone that offers the bandwidth and the Quality of Service required for research and development activities at this level. It represents the basis for the introduction of 'virtual laboratories' and 'virtual institutes' in Europe.

DANTE has developed a range of interconnectivity agreements with other national research networks, such as ESnet, Abilene and the Internet2 project in the United States, CANARIE in Canada and NII in Japan. More information on DANTE and on GÉANT is available on the DANTE web site at .

Contacts

COLT
Jeremy Stern
Group Marketing
Communications Director
Tel: +44 20 7390 3900

DANTE
Marine Chartois
External Relations Manager
press@dante.org.uk
Tel: +44 1223 302 992
Fax: +44 1223 303 005