LONDON -- COLT Telecom Group plc has significantly strengthened its position in the European IP Virtual Private Network market, having signed over 300 of SWIFT's financial services members across Europe in just 8 months. COLT has a multi-million euro contract with SWIFT, an industry body that supplies secure messaging services to 7,000 financial companies worldwide.

COLT has secured more SWIFT customers across Europe than its competitors, making COLT the first choice of network partner for SWIFT members in Europe. These significant wins have allowed COLT to increase its IP VPN customer base in Europe by 75%, taking the total number of European IP VPN customers to around 700 in just two years.

With financial customer wins spread across the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Benelux, Portugal, Italy and Spain, COLT has reinforced its standing as a leading European telecommunications provider and has further demonstrated its strength in the financial sector.

As a network partner for SWIFT, COLT supplies its members with managed IP VPN services, to provide a reliable and secure link to the Secure IP Network that underpins the SWIFTNet messaging platform. SWIFTNet is an advanced IP-based messaging platform, which allows SWIFT's financial services members to engage in the reliable and secure transmission of critical financial information and transaction data, such as bank payments, reports, and securities information.

"That COLT has migrated over 300 of SWIFT's members to the new SWIFTNet network is a great endorsement from the financial sector," said Steve Akin, COLT President and CEO. "We're experiencing huge demand for IP VPN services from financial services companies, as the solution is ideally suited to companies with multi-branch offices, a geographically dispersed workforce and a need for the fast and secure delivery of data. Through our partnership with SWIFT, we have been able to substantially increase our IP VPN customer base in Europe and are well placed to further bolster our position in this market."

Valued at EUR1.9bn in Western Europe in 2002, the IP VPN market is forecast to grow by 83% in Europe in 2003.1 COLT's managed IP VPN solution for SWIFTNet is based on MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) technology.

This allows financial customers to benefit from enhanced levels of security and scalable network architecture, while allowing them to prioritise the delivery of mission critical applications over the network. The majority of COLT's customers are now demanding MPLS as part of their IP VPN solution.

Didier Verstichel, head of Worldwide Networks, SWIFT commented, "With COLT counting 11 of Europe's 13 stock exchanges and some of the world's biggest financial companies as customers, we were assured of its ability to migrate our customers to SWIFTNet. With COLT as their network partner, our customers benefit from faster provisioning of services, excellent customer service and competitively priced products."

Colt Telecom Group plc