CHENNAI, India: Cable&Wireless Worldwide has inaugurated a new India Centre of Excellence (ICE) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu today. The new centre is part of the Company's expansion plans in India and will serve as the second Network Operating Center (NOC) in the country. The first NOC is located in Bangalore and together these two centres will manage and support communication networks of over 6,500 enterprise and carrier customers across Asia, Europe and the Americas. This represents a 55% increase in C&W Worldwide's India operations' capacity to support the Company's customer base.

The new facility, located in RMZ Millennia Business Park, Perangudi (RMZ is India's largest gold rated green building in India, certified by the US Green Building Council) is spread over a 15,000 square feet area and is capable of holding up to 300 employees. C&W Worldwide now operates five NOC facilities, with the remainder located in the United Kingdom. Our existing Bangalore centre, which opened in 1995, supports major international customers including Citibank, Ryanair, Standard Chartered Bank and HSBC.

The Chennai centre will provide round-the-clock network surveillance, performance monitoring and support, and fault resolution for voice and data networks. This will enable C&W Worldwide's customers to focus their resources on their core business, instead of dedicating expensive IT resources on maintaining and managing their communications networks. This, in turn, will help reduce their overall operational costs and increase network efficiency and performance. The Chennai centre will also strengthen the Company's disaster recovery capabilities in the region.

Speaking on the announcement, Nick Lambert, Managing Director - Global Markets, Cable&Wireless Worldwide said: "India is one of the most important markets for C&W Worldwide. Our longstanding presence in India gives us an exceptional understanding of the market dynamics and growth opportunities in the region. We are making good progress in expanding our footprint in the country and beyond, and have an excellent blue chip client base, including 10 out of the top 15 outsourcing firms and three leading Indian banks. The opening of a new centre in Chennai demonstrates our total commitment and focus on the emerging markets.

In India, we have a dedicated and highly talented workforce, which is the backbone for our success. Service is our number one priority and I believe that our people are one of our key differentiators in the marketplace today."

C&W Worldwide has already announced a US$30 million investment in the Indian Multi-Service Platform (MSP) which was launched in 2009, and another US$50 million in the Europe India Gateway (EIG). EIG is a new undersea cable system providing greater network capacity between Europe and India. Slated for launch in early 2011, the 15,000 kilometres long EIG is the first high bandwidth (3.84 terabits per second) cable system using dense wavelength division multiplexing technology connecting the United Kingdom with India via the Mediterranean Sea.

C&W Worldwide views EIG as a strategic investment as India gears up for the launch of 3G services in the coming months. It is believed that with the introduction of 3G, consumers will increasingly use more bandwidth-hungry applications such as Internet based video and corporates will demand more business focused services and applications such as corporate VPN. With this growing demand, service providers will face huge capacity challenges across all their networks - which will exponentially drive up the demand for bandwidth in the country. This, in turn, will create a strong growth opportunity for C&W Worldwide in India. In addition, EIG will also serve as a resilient, alternative route in the event of a cable outage. Investing in multiple cable systems allows C&W Worldwide to seamlessly reroute capacity during cable breaks - such as during the Taiwan earthquake (in Dec 2006) and the Middle East cable breaks (in Feb 2008).

Since 1995, C&W Worldwide has been providing enterprise and carrier telecommunication solutions in India and the Company currently employees 500 people in the country.

About Cable&Wireless Worldwide

Cable&Wireless Worldwide (LSE: CW.) aims to be the first-choice provider of mission critical communications. The Company is one of the world's leading critical communication providers delivering a range of high-quality managed voice, data and IP-based services and applications to large corporates, multinational companies, governments, carrier customers and resellers across the UK, Asia Pacific, India, Middle East & Africa, Continental Europe and North America.

In the UK, Cable&Wireless Worldwide owns the country's largest fibre network dedicated to business users of telecoms reaching 20,500km in length, and providing ubiquitous UK access through a combination of fibre, digital, microwave, radio and leased circuits. The network has presence in more than 400 towns and cities in the UK, with 802 unbundled exchanges covering 55% of the population.

On an international scale, Cable&Wireless Worldwide's global next-generation network (NGN) stretches to more than 500,000km, including interests in 69 global cable systems, and provides connectivity to 153 countries. The Company's Multi-Service Platform, an IP-based next-generation platform that operates across the NGN, offers a single environment on which voice and data applications can be converged to drive business efficiencies. The network is uniquely designed with inbuilt resilience and the capability to re-route traffic across diverse paths in the event of failure of one or more paths, particularly at the international level.

With more than 6,300 colleagues globally, Cable&Wireless Worldwide is committed to delivering exceptional customer service and developing long term partnerships with its customers.

To find out more, visit http://www.cw.com

    
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