Chicago–Broadwing Communications this week announced extensions to both its international converged service and its video distribution products. Through a partnership with Global Crossing, Broadwing is extending the reach of its Layer 3 MPLS-based virtual private networks to the global market. The company also is adding a piece to its next-generation media networks service to connect content creators to service providers wanting to offer IPTV.

Broadwing chose Global Crossing as its international partner after an extensive request for information, said Gina Nomellini, director of international services for Broadwing.

“We needed to extend the reach of our Layer 3 IP VPNs,” she said. “Through four points of interconnection between our network and Global Crossing’s, we are able to deliver the service throughout the world. We also have a level of integration that allows us to automate order entry, trouble ticketing and network management. We have an end-to-end [service level agreement] that covers the service, including the local access circuit. Global Crossing sends us the network data, and we include that in our Web reporting, which the customer can access through a portal.”

The local access circuit information is limited to availability, unless customers purchase a managed router service, in which case Broadwing can manage through the router right down to the premises, Nomellini said.

“This is a continuation of our multi-vendor strategy,” she said. “We have taken a best-of-breed approach and tried to have three to five vendors per region of the world, in cable and sub-sea networks and in local access for the economy, stability and guaranteed access for our customers. We will continue to expand those partnerships.”

Global Crossing was chosen for this partnership because of its flexibility and willingness to match services, Nomellini said.

“We have a long-standing relationship with them–they are a customer of ours, and we are of theirs,” she said. “There hasn’t been a situation of channel conflict.”

The video service is the second leg of Broadwing’s media service offering, which already connects venues to network production centers for transmission of live events, such as sports, and other content. Broadwing is now providing forward distribution of content to cable headends, IPTV headends and satellite uplinks for ultimate distribution to consumers, said Jamey Heinze, senior director of product management for data and media services.

Although AT&T and Verizon are large enough to build their own national fiber-optic backbones and get content directly from the major providers, other telcos that want to provide IPTV “need to go to an aggregator who can give them that content,” Heinze said. “Broadwing will supply some content to the big guys, but longer term, it will be everybody but AT&T and Verizon.”

By using a terrestrial approach to distributing content, as opposed to buying satellite transponder space, service providers can save money and target specific geographic areas with specialty content such as ethnic programming, Heinze said.