British Telecommunications Plc announced from San Jose yesterday that it is expanding its BT Tymnet global data network to provide local access in 39 more countries 19 in Europe, eight in the Pacific Rim, seven in the Middle East and five in Africa, and is enhancing the network to support Frame Relay 2Mbps packet services using switches from StrataCom Communications Inc. The investment is estimated at $350m or so. The new fast packet services will in-teroperate with BT’s existing global data network. Expansion of the global data network will provide customers direct, end-to-end, managed communications over the Global Network Services managed data network service. Short-term plans include expanding its presence into 20 new countries and 55 new cities around the world and the company claims that the expansion will enable it to offer multinationals direct access to more countries than any other telecommunications supplier in the world. The plans include deployment of 100 new direct acc-ess nodes in 25 European. In the US, Frame Relay services will be offered in over 350 cities, more than double the US reach and capacity of its current network infrastructure. Plans to add Frame Re-lay in the UK and continental Europe will be an-nounced towards the end of October. In the former Comecon countries, Global Network Services is operational with the establishment of an access node in Rostock, Germany with plans to add Dresden and Leipzig. The strategy for expansion into Eastern Europe will be to negotiate agreements with third parties to provide direct network access to customers negotiations are at their final stages with such third parties in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and node installation is planned for Budapest, Prague, and Bratislava. Negotiations are also under way in Poland and the former Soviet Republics for nodes in Warsaw and Moscow. Long-term plans also include expansion throughout South and Central America, targeting 10 countries Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In the AsiaPacific region, countries on the list are the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, in the Middle East, Israel, Cyprus, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates; in Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
