SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- At a signing ceremony today hosted by Costa Rica's Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), the state-run entity responsible for the nation's telecommunications, and the national Internet Service Provider Radiografica Costarricense S.A. (RACSA), Global Crossing announced plans to extend its core network to Costa Rica.

Through the extension of Global Crossing's Pan American Crossing (PAC) system, which runs along the west coast of Central America from Panama to Los Angeles, at the Unqui cable landing point in Esterillos, Costa Rica will gain direct access to the world's premier global IP network, which delivers services in more than 600 cities in 60 countries. The project requires additional governmental approval, and construction is expected to be complete as early as fourth quarter 2007.

As part of the cable landing agreement, Global Crossing also announced that it will donate an STM1 to the Costa Rican academic sector, the largest donation of its kind in the history of the country. Following a signing ceremony for the landing agreement, ICE and its Internet arm, RACSA, immediately announced that they will purchase 24 STM-1 Private Lines, the equivalent of 3.732 Gbps of bandwidth, from Global Crossing. One STM-1 is equivalent to 155.52 Mbps of bandwidth.

"Latin America continues to be an integral part of our global strategy, and we're building on our successes in this region by extending our core network to Costa Rica," commented John Legere, CEO of Global Crossing. "This agreement provides ICE/RACSA with a robust solution for worldwide connectivity from the Pacific coast, and enables the delivery of seamless, premier IP solutions to Costa Rican based businesses and end users taking advantage of all the benefits of world-class Global Crossing network."

Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC)