LONDON -- Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:LVLT) today announced a strategic long-term agreement with leading Middle East telecommunications operator Saudi Telecom (STC) to enable international IP and content distribution services in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East.

The agreement leverages the respective strengths of each company to provide significantly enhanced connectivity and breadth of services to customers connecting to the Middle East. Both US and European CDN customers will have access to a new broadband market in the Middle East and content customers in the Middle East will have the ability to distribute their content across both STC’s and Level 3’s international networks.

“With the largest international network in the Middle East and Africa, Saudi Telecom is the only Middle East operator today that has international connectivity by way of both multiple submarine cable systems and a terrestrial cable system via the recently launched Jeddah-Amman-Damascus-Istanbul (JADI) link,” said Saad Demyati, Saudi Telecom’s vice president of Wholesale Business Unit. “Our relationship with Level 3 allows us to offer the reliable, high-quality global connectivity and end-to-end solutions our customers increasingly demand, with the unique benefit of access to a fully redundant and scalable Tier 1 network.”

In addition, Level 3 is providing STC with increased IP connectivity in the form of multiple 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) ports at various points of presence (PoPs) across Europe.

Level 3 Communications Inc. (NYSE: LVLT)