PARIS -- As part of its carrier business, France Telecom announced today further progress in its GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) offering, with a greater reach in Asia.. France Telecom has indeed signed three new GRX interconnection agreements with leading GRX providers in Asia: SingTel, Aicent and REACH. The deals enable each of these carriers to link their GRX networks with the one of France Telecom, thereby enabling the exchange of GPRS roaming traffic on a wider scale.The announcement follows a similar deal between France Telecom and Cable & Wireless in August. France Telecom's GRX offer now covers more than 90 mobile operators in 36 countries throughout the world, through contracts with mobile operators and 12 interconnection agreements with other GRX providers. This includes 23 mobile operators covering 9 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Thanks to agreements like these, GRX providers are starting to reach the critical mass that enables participating GPRS operators to provide extensive worldwide coverage to their subscribers. These latest interconnections took place at the GRX Peering Amsterdam (GPA) exchange point, set up by a group of 17 operators in 2001 to enable faster and more cost-effective interconnection between GRX networks than other bilateral arrangements. France Telecom is among these pioneers, and is also an active member of the GRX Task Force, created in 2000 under the International Roaming Expert Group (IREG) of the GSM Association.France Telecom SA