"Explosive Growth" in Regional Telecommunications Sparks South Florida's Emergence as Major Telecom Gateway to Latin America.

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 1999--

Independent Partition Switching Service Lowers Costs

and Eases Entry to Deregulated International Marketplace

South Florida, and especially Miami, is fast becoming a key international telecom gateway between the U.S. and Latin America. New infrastructure investments, inspired by deregulation, and the emergence of new network operators serving the region, have resulted in an "explosive growth" in international traffic passing through this market, Melissa Craig, CEO of New York-based General Telecom told delegates to the Telecom Latina '99 conference here today.

Network operators serving the U.S.-Latin America routes can already contract for new direct fiber optic or satellite capacity at wholesale rates thereby reducing the price of international business and residential calls, according to Ms. Craig. "Now, thanks to new Independent Gateway Service Providers (IGSPs), like General Telecom, with such new switch facilities in Miami, network operators can lower their cost of market entry even further, and pass those savings along to the customer," she said.

Until recently, international telecommunications between the U.S. and its Latin American, Caribbean, and South American neighbors had been ruled by international agreements between countries and three to four dominant U.S. international carriers. Historically, more than 90% of the traffic is carried over the cables and satellite circuits included in those agreements. As deregulation has expanded in the region, new opportunities abound for enterpreneurial involvement including brand new networks targeting niche markets and carriers based outside the area in need of end-to-end connectivity.

According to Ms. Craig, the high cost of providing switch facilities for international interconnections in this market has been, until now, a major deterrent to anyone seeking to take advantage of those opportunities.

"IGSPs level the playing field by providing services and features that equal or surpass the switching and management capabilities of the world's largest facilities-based carriers such as AT&T and MCI Worldcom," Ms. Craig said. "Accessing U.S. overseas markets is accomplished by leasing inbound and outbound ports on IGSP gateway switches such as the Nortel DMS 300/250 models operated by General Telecom in New York, Miami and Los Angeles," she explained. "Operators can be in business within 30 days with firewall protected and functionally independent switch partitions that can interconnect with any and all international and domestic carriers."

IGSPs support customized routing necessary for favorable economic delivery at the distant end, Ms. Craig said. "Their switches allow network operators to route to the city-code level and deliver traffic to more than one carrier in each country. This allows them to take advantage of alternating low rates," she said. "The ability to capitalize on a competitive carrier's low rates in one city, for example, without losing the ubiquitous delivery service to the rest of that country, can be extremely profitable."

General Telecom supports independent networks that are often not recognizable to the general public, but nonetheless serve to lower costs to the consumer in a deregulated market. The network operators establish working relationships with major international and domestic carriers for delivery in the U.S. and throughout the world. Networks include many low-cost calling card companies, independent ethnic and specialized business connections and a wide assortment of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), international carriers, and resellers specializing in one or more geographic markets.

Ms. Craig said the IGSP service package includes a host of menu-driven management and financial tools allowing operators to run their business from any location, 24 hours a day. "All that is required is a computer and modem," she said.

"Financial tools that can be offered by IGSPs include hourly traffic reports, call attempts, call completion ratios, total minutes clocked, call rating with real time debiting and complete billing services," Ms. Craig said.

General Telecom is the first and leading IGSP of tier-one partition switching and network management services in the United States. With its linked Nortel DMS 300/250 switch facilities in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, the company provides confidential and secure interconnections between national and international carriers, network operators, resellers, arbitrageurs and others wishing to gain fast, economical access to domestic and international telecommunications services markets.

Note to Editors: To request a copy of Ms. Craig's presentation in English, Spanish or Portuguese, call [phone].