Viatel Introduces Belgian Competitive National and International Leased Line Services

Telecommunications services provider Viatel Inc. will become one of the first new entrant carriers to offer competitive, leased line services in Belgium. Customers with high volumes of voice or data traffic between specific locations can lease dedicated point-to-point circuits for a fixed monthly cost. Viatel's new offerings are expected to be priced approximately 60% less than the current private line rates of Belgacom, the national incumbent telephone company.

Initially, Viatel will offer 2 to 155.5 Mb/s circuits between ten cities in Belgium (Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, Hasselt, Kortrijk, Liege, Mons, Namur, and Tournai), as well as Amiens, Amsterdam, London, New York, Paris, and Rotterdam.

Dedicated private line bandwidth can be used for voice, high-speed IP, digital video, or other data communications, or for interconnection to other service providers. Leased circuits between points within Belgium will use Viatel's national fiber ring, established, in part, through a dark fiber leasing agreement with NMBS Telecom, a division of the Belgian National Railway.

All private circuits are monitored on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week basis by Viatel's network operations centers in the UK and US, and can be automatically rerouted in the event of any network interruption.