STOCKHOLM and SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA -- Costa Rica’s state-owned telecommunications provider, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), and Telia Carrier today announced that ICE has selected Telia Carrier’s global fiber backbone to provide dedicated Internet access to its customers in Central America.

ICE, the largest over-the-top (OTT) operator in Central America and the number one retail ISP in Central America and the Caribbean according to Dyn IP Transit Intelligence, is experiencing growing demand for broadband services. Gaining access to Telia Carrier’s leading tier-1 Internet backbone will enable ICE to launch the first 10 Gbit/s IP Transit services for their operation in Central America.

"ICE is poised to become the leading provider of Internet and mobile telephony in Costa Rica, offering advanced solutions and robust networks that allow companies to project an extensive range of intelligent services," said German Sanchez, head of the Infrastructure Division of ICE Group. "Working with a leading Tier-1 Internet provider such as Telia Carrier assures our customers a direct secure connection to Internet access with lower latency, and the flexibility they need to grow, as well as more capacity than they need."

Telia Carrier’s global backbone, which is built on a redundant architecture, reaches the most important gateway for Central America, the Maya-1 Cable system. This system, together with Telia Carrier’s IP Transit services in the U.S., play an important role in supplying the demands of ICE. The new solution includes Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection, which ICE can count on to provide the highest standards of protection to its end customers and their business critical applications.

"ICE has climbed to the next level in the market by connecting its Internet backbone to Telia Carrier’s 100G services, said Edison De Leon, Regional Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for Telia Carrier. "This capability marks an important step in meeting the growth of market demand and ensuring the development of telecommunications in Costa Rica. By providing DDoS protection integrated with our IPT services, we also provide ICE´s end customers with an inherently high level of protection against malicious attacks."

Telia Carrier’s global fiber backbone has grown organically, without acquisitions, and was the first to be 100 Gbit/s-enabled in both Europe and North America. It was also the first network to successfully transmit 1 Tbit/s in super channels on its U.S. network. According to Dyn Research’s global backbone rankings, The company’s global IP backbone, AS1299, is currently ranked as number one.

Telia Carrier