Global Crossing, a telecommunications solution provider, will be holding educational sessions for attendees at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, held February 2^nd – 4^th, 2009 in Miami, Florida.

 

Whether your needs encompass broadband, voice, data or multimedia communications -- including readily accessible audio-, video- or Web-conferencing -- Global Crossing (News - Alert) can provide the telecommunications solution to meet your business needs. The company’s integrated, global IP-based network was designed for the convergence of voice, video and data, and provides services virtually anywhere.

 

Global Crossing is currently helping 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies, as well as 700 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs worldwide to succeed. Because of its world-class network, the company’s range of IP-based solutions and the expertise and dedication of its employees, Global Crossing claims to be the best alternative for serving the needs of customers.

 

Deb Swann, vice president of voice services, along with Joda Schaumberg, senior director of unified collaboration services, Global Crossing took some time to discuss with TMC's President, Rich Tehrani, the company’s achievements and where it is headed for 2009.

 

DS & JS: Global Crossing started with a vision ahead of its time. We created the world’s first global IP-based network (eventually, 100,000 miles of fiber optics) designed to meet the surging demand for Internet capacity. We also created the industry’s first seamless global network to service multinational companies. In addition, Global Crossing expanded through a combination of acquisition and network construction (subsea and terrestrial).

 

Another company milestone was achieved when Global Crossing acquired Frontier and IXnet in the U.S., and Racal Telecom in the UK. We confronted reverse of supply and demand conditions during second half of 2001, as the industry suffered the dot-com burst.

 

Global Crossing has also weathered many storms, including:

-- Faced a “perfect storm” scenario of negative market pressures: over-capacity in market.

-- Experienced the external shock of 9/11.

-- Resulting price erosion impacted ability to execute business plan.

 

On October 4, 2001, John Legere was hired as CEO, bringing in a new leadership team to

manage restructuring.

 

-- In January 2002, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. During 22 months of bankruptcy, Global Crossing implemented measures to streamline operations while focusing on customer retention.

-- During bankruptcy, retained 90 percent of its customer base.

-- Kept its global network intact.

-- Reduced operating expenses more than 60% between 2001 and 2003.

-- Closed 200 offices worldwide and reduced employee population from approximately 17,000 to more than 5,000 today.

 

Following bankruptcy, Global Crossing shifted its focus from customer retention to customer acquisition while executing a business transformation strategy. The company emerged from bankruptcy with new ownership – ST Telemedia, which today owns approximately 64 percent. We also implemented a new business plan focused on enterprise and carrier data markets to improve margin performance. In addition, Global Crossing divested non-strategic parts of the business; sold Small Business Group (SBG)’ sold Trader Voice – a financial stock trading platform; retrenched Consumer Division; sold Global Marine.

 

Today, it’s all about growth – ten consecutive quarters of growth and the realization of our vision.

 

Despite the challenging global economic environment, our business continues to perform well and on plan. The third quarter of 2008 was our company’s 10th consecutive quarter of total revenue growth and adjusted gross margin expansion. It was our sixth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted cash EBITDA, which grew 14 percent from the second quarter. And we ended the third quarter with a total cash balance of $380 million, which was bigger than it was one quarter ago. While this is all positive news for our company, we remain focused on delivering a best-in-class customer experience and continuing to drive efficiencies throughout our business. We continue to execute on our growth strategy amid market trends that support strong demand for our services, resulting in added momentum and financial progress.

 

Demand is helping to push progress. Multiple market forces are making IP services more appealing. With companies looking to make corporate budgets go further, higher fuel prices making plane and car travel less appealing, companies looking to reduce carbon footprints, and employee populations needing increasing remote access to networks, we are seeing good things on the horizon.

 

Satisfaction is our hallmark. Our global IP network, its high level of performance, and our IP expertise are key areas of differentiation for our company. Our outstanding account support has given Global Crossing a competitive advantage. Satisfaction scores indicate that we continue to outperform the competition.

 

The industry is taking note of our successes. Analyst firms from Gartner (News - Alert) to Forrester and Telemark have been praising our progress with awards and accolades.

DS & JS: We don’t think so.With the fluctuation in oil prices these days, the U.S. economy in the midst of uncertainty, an increasing push for companies to go green, and airline cuts making corporate travel less and less appealing, many businesses are looking to save on travel costs while increasing office productivity. This perfect storm scenario is fueling the demand for “working smarter.” Collaboration services are leading the way in this area. Global Crossing is seeing an uptick in the usage of collaboration services, experiencing collaboration volume growth of 30 percent. The industry average is 15 percent.

 

As part of our effort to be an environmentally and socially responsible business, Global Crossing operates a car share program in the United Kingdom for two offices. Employees can register their travel details and find other commuters who may be able to share the ride to and from work. Participants in the program also receive priority car parking near the building entrance. We are considering expanding this program to other sites once the success level is determined. In more urban areas, where mass transit is an option, we encourage that as a more environmentally friendly way to get around.

Global Crossing also is managing the environmental impact of its own data centers by supporting and deploying virtualization technologies and strategies that more effectively make more efficient use of resources. For example, Global Crossing is actively reducing its data center environmental needs, such as power, placement, and cooling, with virtualization solutions that will help consolidate more than 250 physical servers to 14 physical servers in our primary North America data centers. This virtualization strategy not only reduces the operational support and associated costs, but helps reduce the overall need for real estate, power, and cooling. It also fully aligns our efforts with current green initiatives happening across the IT industry.

 

The company recently became a founding partner within the Green Technology Initiative (News - Alert) (GTI), a consortium of several organizations with British operations that includes advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, data hosting provider Carrenza, EDF Energy and Cisco (News - Alert). Global Crossing’s managed services allow customers to reduce or eliminate internal energy consumption by replacing their physical networks with virtual ones that consolidate their data and voice needs and connect multiple office locations.

 

DS: I have drawn experiences from many people in my life but the person who influenced me most in mycareer was a woman senior executive with a large manufacturing company. She was a strong leader aswell as being my manager and taught me the value of management by facts, mentoring people, and howto assess situations with the associated level of risks to achieve business goals. Each of these attributes continues to be important in my daily activities enabling me to make solid business decisions that help drive business objects.

 

DS: Telecom industry is exciting because it is dynamic and continues to evolve. In the beginning, theindustry was primarily telephone services and the “telecom providers” were all on a level playing field.Now telecom has evolved to allow any communication voice and data to tie communities of userstogether. The field now encompasses anything from land-line telephone, MPLS, VoIP, Television,mobile, satellite, to unified communications.

 

A wide open field introduces many different global players -- from traditional telecom providers and cable providers, to hardware/software providers and enhanced service providers. This dynamic environment provides exciting challenges and opportunities both current ones as well as those evolving. Global Crossing is positioned to lead the worldwide IP adventure. Global Crossing is ready for this by enabling connectivity to 690 cities in 60 countries. We have also completed interoperability testing with over 70 vendors to ensure that their products work with our VoIP systems. This allows customers to feel confident that their current equipment will work seamlessly with ours.

 

DS: Global Crossing’s VoIP Services deliver carrier-class quality, reliability, and security for maximum savingson overall telephony costs, reducing total cost of ownership. Unlike voice services based on publicInternet transport, VoIP packets are transported on a fully interoperable voice network that receives thehighest priority on the private IP backbone.

Global Crossing works with the customer to define the essential aspects of their network andmethodically on their configuration with a dedicated team to ensure each customer is comfortable inmigration of their current systems to VoIP. We ensure that all VoIP Services have been thoroughlytested in the lab with our customer’s unique requirements. This prevents unnecessary surprises at service turn up. We take the pain of the unknown away from the customer with clear dependableservices thus instilling peace of mind.