New Delhi:

With this announcement Data Access has become the first South Asian carrier to launch ILD services in the US. After obtaining a facility-based 214-carrier license in December 2002, the company''s New York switch facility is fully functional in a record time of five months and presently carrying 4 million minutes per day. The switch is interconnected with Data Access'' global network and is delivering traffic to 230 countries around the world.

The Data Access global network consists of nine network operating centres (NOCs) around the globe and is cumulatively capable of carrying 10 billion minutes of traffic a year. The majority of ILD calls sent over this network is not passed to other carriers and therefore remain "on net."

This delivers unmatched economy and quality in terms of call completion rate and post dial delay (PDD). Call completion rate defines the ratio of call completed to the number of call attempts. PDD measures the time taken for a phone to ring once a number has been dialled.

"Expansion into the Americas is a natural extension of our achievements in the Indian market. We captured 40 per cent of India''s long-distance market in a record time of nine months. Our success can be attributed to our fourth-generation global network design and our highly committed manpower across the world. We now bring the benefit of this network and skill set to the American continents and its telecom users to make global telecom affordable," says Siddhartha Ray, founder and managing director, Data Access India.

Data Access America is designated as the apex overseas holding company for the global operations of Data Access. Other markets where Data Access operates carrier licenses include the UK, Sri Lanka and Asia Pacific. Network centres are located in London, Colombo and Hong Kong.

"Our cost structure gives us a competitive price advantage over most of the international carriers including those located in North America," says Ashutosh Misra, president and CEO, Data Access America. "We deploy an onshore-offshore model, which has previously only been used by software development companies. All nine nodal switches across the Data Access Network are managed and controlled from the Data Access Super NOC in New Delhi, India thereby giving significant cost advantage to the company''s overseas operation.

"We are very bullish about capturing a significant part of the fast growing North American voice business for international destinations. We are also looking at further expansion into other fast-growing markets in North America including Mexico, Latin American countries, the Philippines and Japan."

Data Access America''s New York switch has direct routes to over 200 countries across the world through 84 carrier interconnects across nine network operating centres. The North American operation has the capability of connecting direct traffic from eight aggregation points across the US, three aggregation points across Canada and 24 other aggregation points across the world.

The switching centre in New York has been designed as a Super PoP (point of presence) in the Data Access global network and supports both circuit switch and packet switch voice and data traffic. The New York Super PoP is cross connected to all tele-houses in the New York and New Jersey area as well as to tele-houses in Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California; Austin, Texas; Denver, Colorado; and Chicago, Illinois.