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Global Crossing and Lockheed Martin Extend Agreement to Provide Royal Mail's Managed IP Solution
LONDON, July 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Global Crossing announced a three-year extension of its eight-year agreement with Lockheed Martin to provide a fully managed IP solution for Royal Mail in the United Kingdom. Royal Mail is the nationwide postal service operated by holding company Royal Mail Group plc. The extension is valued at $14 million and means the contract will now run to 2011.
"The extension of our agreement with Lockheed Martin illustrates how Global Crossing is following through on its strategy to develop partnerships and alliances, building on the strong relationships we have with systems integrators in the UK to expand these relationships across the globe," said John Legere, Global Crossing's chief executive officer. "Global Crossing will continue to provide Lockheed Martin and thus the Royal Mail with the high performance required to support such a time-sensitive operation, as we have done since 2001."
Lockheed Martin is the prime systems integrator for the Address Interpretation (AI) project - a program implemented by the Royal Mail to provide a fully integrated, national mail processing system that improves Royal Mail's efficiency and reduces its operating costs.
The AI system provides a networked solution linking the regional mail centers distributed across the UK to create an integrated, national network of mail processing machines that sort and direct letters for efficient dispatch. Global Crossing provides and manages the wide-area IP network connecting the mail centers and a number of Manual Data Entry Centre locations (MDECs) via fully resilient, dual, diversely routed circuits.
"We needed a system that would be more cost effective, solve our outstanding problems and create a platform for future business," said Dave Smith, head of technology for mail sorting at the Royal Mail. "To do that we needed to integrate the best technology from across the industry and we couldn't see a path to delivering that on our own. The solution provided by Lockheed and Global Crossing has already delivered a 50 percent increase in automated address reading, and there will be more improvements to come."
By integrating individual mail processing machines to operate and communicate within the AI system framework, the Royal Mail has increased efficiency, overall functionality and performance for mail services in the UK. The AI application supported by Global Crossing's resilient network infrastructure automatically takes an electronic image of a mail piece at the originating mail center, extracts the address information by optical character recognition algorithms and, if required, human interpretation and then uses this information to sort the mail piece for transport to its destination. At the destination mail center, mail pieces are sorted once more for delivery, using the information provided by the originating mail center across Global Crossing's network.
Its relationship with Lockheed Martin demonstrates that Global Crossing is delivering on its indirect strategy to maintain existing and develop new systems integrator partnerships globally. Global Crossing provides its partners flexible IP solutions, backed by stringent service level agreements over its globally secure IP network with unparalleled service and support.
ABOUT ROYAL MAIL
Royal Mail Group plc is a public limited company wholly owned by the government, with annual sales in excess of 8 billion pounds sterling and employs 196,000 people.
Our marketplace is changing rapidly and we are providing hundreds of services to meet new demands - from electronic billing to banking, from warehousing to customer returns.
ABOUT LOCKHEED MARTIN
Lockheed Martin UK, a unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation, is a leader in systems integration working on major programmes spanning the aerospace, defence, civil and commercial sectors with significant capabilities in the transport infrastructure market. In the UK, Lockheed Martin has annual sales in the range of 400-600 million pounds working with more than 75 business partners. Lockheed Martin employs over 1,000 people at sites across the UK.
Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, Lockheed Martin employs about 130,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced technology systems, products and services.
ABOUT GLOBAL CROSSING
Global Crossing provides telecommunications solutions over the world's first integrated global IP-based network. Its core network connects more than 300 cities and 30 countries worldwide, and delivers services to more than 500 major cities, 50 countries and 6 continents around the globe. The company's global sales and support model matches the network footprint and, like the network, delivers a consistent customer experience worldwide.
Global Crossing IP services are global in scale, linking the world's enterprises, governments and carriers with customers, employees and partners worldwide in a secure environment that is ideally suited for IP-based business applications, allowing e-commerce to thrive. The company offers a full range of managed data and voice products including Global Crossing IP VPN Service, Global Crossing Managed Services and Global Crossing VoIP services, to more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500, as well as 700 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs.
Please visit http://www.globalcrossing.com/ for more information about Global Crossing.
Statements made in this press release that state Global Crossing's intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward- looking statements. These statements contain words such as "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "project," "intend," "plan," "believe," "will," "seek," or similar expressions. Such statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the statements, including the conditioning of the company's continued listing on the NASDAQ National Market on its timely filing with the SEC of all periodic reports for all reporting periods ending on or prior to September 30, 2005; the company's history of substantial operating losses and the fact that, in the near term, funds from operations will not satisfy cash requirements; legal and contractual restrictions on the payment of dividends and the inter-company transfer of funds by the company's subsidiaries, including restrictions under the senior secured notes indenture applicable to Global Crossing (UK) Telecommunications Limited ("GCUK"); the likelihood that the prices the company charges for its services will continue to decrease; the company's ability to continue to connect its network to incumbent carriers' networks or maintain Internet peering arrangements on favorable terms; the success of the company's business realignment plan and the realization of anticipated cost savings; the consequences of any inadvertent violation of the company's Network Security Agreement with the U.S. Government; the impact of actual and potential customers' bankruptcies on the company's sales prospects and results of operations; increased competition and pricing pressures resulting from technology advances and regulatory changes; competitive disadvantages relative to competitors with superior resources; the impact on the company's competitiveness of its technology choices; the company's dependence on third parties for many functions; political, legal and other risks due to the company's substantial international operations; risks arising out of the company's material weaknesses in internal controls and possible difficulties and delays in improving such controls; the concentration of GCUK's revenue in a limited number of customers, and the rights of such customers to terminate their contracts or to simply cease purchasing services thereunder; and other risks referenced from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no duty to update information contained in this press release or in other public disclosures at any time.
CONTACT GLOBAL CROSSING:
Press Contacts
Becky Yeamans
+ 1 973-937-0155
PR@globalcrossing.com
Kendra Langlie
+ 1 305-808-5912
LatAmPR@globalcrossing.com
Mish Desmidt
Europe
+ 44 (0) 1256 722866
EuropePR@globalcrossing.com
Analysts/Investors Contact
Laurinda Pang
+ 1 800-836-0342
glbc@globalcrossing.com
Global Crossing
CONTACT: Press, Becky Yeamans, +1-973-937-0155, PR@globalcrossing.com,or Kendra Langlie, +1-305-808-5912, LatAmPR@globalcrossing.com, or MishDesmidt, Europe, +44-1256-722866, EuropePR@globalcrossing.com;Analysts-Investors, Laurinda Pang, 1-800-836-0342, glbc@globalcrossing.com,all of Global Crossing
Web site: http://www.globalcrossing.com/
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