Hibernia Atlantic renews Guardian Maintenance Agreement with Global Marine

Confidence high in Guardian service for mission critical cable networkas bandwidth demand across the Atlantic continues to rise

Chelmsford, UK:  Hibernia Atlantic, the secure and diverse Trans-Atlantic bandwidth provider, has renewed its Guardian Private Cable Maintenance agreement with Global Marine Systems Limited, the independent market-leading subsea cable installation and maintenance company.

Hibernia Atlantic has been part of Global Marine’s Guardian agreement, which provides fibre optic cable owners and operators with maintenance and repair services, since December 2003 and, as industry demand for network capacity grows*, will continue to benefit from surety of costs and a bespoke maintenance solution.

The Guardian agreement accommodates Hibernia Atlantic’s specific operational and technical requests in line with mutually agreed performance metrics, such as a guaranteed rapid response time for maintenance requests.  The renewed contract began earlier this month and will run until 2009.

Commenting today, Bjarni K. Thorvardarson, CEO of Hibernia Atlantic said, “We are delighted to continue our strong working relationship with Global Marine and, as the demand for bandwidth rises, Hibernia Atlantic and its customers can have total peace of mind that this mission critical cable network is in safe hands.  Global Marine has continued to impress us with its highly professional service, cutting edge technology and impressive fleet of cable ships.”

Spanning over 12.000 kilometres, Hibernia Atlantic’s Trans-Atlantic Cable System connects the UK to North America by two submarine cables in the North and South Atlantic, and provides European and US customers with direct, secure and high speed transatlantic connectivity.  As part of the Guardian agreement, it will be covered by Global Marine's full time, four vessel Atlantic footprint that is based in the ports of Portland UK, Bermuda and Curaçao.

“Hibernia Atlantic is a key player in the telecommunications market and its decision to remain part of the Guardian programme is further validation of Global Marine’s customer first approach to the transatlantic cable maintenance market.” concluded Gabriel Ruhan, Managing Director at Global Marine.

*According to recent research from TeleGeography Research, a Washington research firm that track global bandwidth usage, the industry raised capacity by about one terabit (a trillion bits) per second to about 5.5 terabits per second last year to meet growing demand for bandwidth across the Atlantic.

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For more information please contact:

Deborah Bartlett
Marketing & Communications
Global Marine Systems Limited
Tel: +44 (0) 1245 702105
Email: deborah.bartlett@globalmarinesystems.com