Asia Online Lays the Foundation for Transnational Service Guarantees; New Regional Backbone Network Will Allow Full QoS Management.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

DANVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 3, 2000

Asia Online Ltd., a pan-Asian-Pacific Internet business solutions provider with U.S. headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area, has unveiled a multiphase plan to establish a high-speed private backbone network connecting its operations across the region and into the US Internet. This will give the company end-to-end control over its network traffic, enabling it to offer a broader range of high-performance Internet services.

Phase one of the Asia Online backbone - an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) ring connecting its five-city Australian operations with a trans-Tasman link to the company's operations in New Zealand's two largest cities - is already up and running. Phase two of the project kicks in this week with the inauguration of an ATM link between Hong Kong and San Jose, California, to be followed by a Sydney/San Jose link in November. Subsequent phases will complete Asia Online's intercontinental backbone with an ATM link between Hong Kong and Sydney, and spokes from Hong Kong to other Asian nodes.

"We want to be in the position of offering our customers guaranteed levels of service, no matter where that service is coming from or delivered to," said Kiron Chatterjee, chief technology officer of Asia Online. "We can't do this using the shared exchange infrastructure model that is prevalent in the Internet service provider industry.

"The Internet industry has come a long way with shared backbone infrastructure and, historically speaking, it made a lot sense to share the cost. With the amount of new fibre-optic cable capacity coming on stream across the Pacific and within Asia, however, the economies of international bandwidth are changing for the better.

"Asia Online is keen to set the standard for service delivery, which is why we are committing to a private backbone offering. There are multiple providers of bandwidth which can meet our requirements and we have options of quickly adding capacity on any particular route as our traffic grows."

This new infrastructure will enable Asia Online to offer virtual private network (VPN) service between the Asia Pacific's major business centres with end-to-end performance guarantees - a rarity in today's Internet environment. The company will also be able to provide application services to customers across the region from a single point on the network, rather that having to replicate service capabilities in each city where it operates.

One of the first applications to benefit from the new backbone will be Critical Path - a sophisticated Web-based collaboration service that Asia Online is hosting in the United States. Within the continental US, the company's backbone will integrate with XO's (the brand recently introduced from the merger of NextLink Communications and Concentric Network) 500 points of presence across North America.

About Asia Online

Asia Online provides access, hosting, web development and systems integration services to over 100,000 customers throughout the Asia Pacific region. These include a variety of Internet-related services including Application Service Provisioning, virtual private networks, dial-up and dedicated leased lines, broadband, roaming, e-commerce, e-business development and hosting, co-location in one of our 10 data centres, unified messaging, portal management and advertising. Through partnerships with US Internet companies and internal development, Asia Online offers Internet-based communications products to both international and domestic customers. These will include audio conferencing, video conferencing, voice-over-IP, and digital signatures. The Asia Online group has offices in China, Hong Kong (SAR) the Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Additional information about Asia Online is available at www.AsiaOnline.net.

Asia Online, Ltd

Global Headquarters: 16/F, One International Finance Centre, 1 Harbour View Street, Central, Hong Kong. North American Headquarters: 649 San Ramon Valley Blvd, Danville, CA. 94526, USA.