Infonet Services Corp repackaged its existing services into a Syncordia-like package last week and confirmed its intention to carry speech, video and data in Europe. This week it extended protocol support when it announced its plan to support SNA/SDLC traffic and multiple local area network protocols over a single digital backbone by the end of the year. Though the the SNA traffic will be limited initially to terminal-host traffic, Infonet intends that full Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking protocols will be carried subsequently. At a time when a number of international partnerships are eyeing the same nascent global outsourcing market as British Telecommunications Plc’s slow-to-get-tsrated Syncordia Corp, Infonet has moulded its high-end business into a package dubbed ECS, Enterprise Communication Services. ECS is aimed at attracting the top 1,000 global companies by offering a familiar blend of full network management and one stop shopping for voice, data, and image transmission. The company freely admits that European restrictions on simple resale of voice capacity prevents it from offering the full set of services, but a spokesman says that ECS is committed to providing voice services in Europe as liberalisation permits. ECS sits at the top of the hierarchy of Infonet services, and lower down comes the grandiose-sounding World Network portfolio, designed for multinationals not in the top 1,000. Infonet’s corporate vice-president of marketing, C Lintecum, says that the market has now split into two segments: those that want full facilities management and those that want simpler pre-packaged services.
