The firm said that the new technology, called IP-VPN QoS, signifies a major investment by the company a cross the region.

"We are extremely proud to be the first company to offer a comprehensive MPLS network in the Caribbean," said Chris Hetherington, CEO Americas & Caribbean, Cable & Wireless.

"Our top corporate customers require guarantees on the speed and Quality of Service (QoS) our IP networks can provide, whether it be for video conferencing, voice services, or email and other transactional data.

"Today, we are in a world where volume of applications and data flow is great, and network capacity can be limited or expensive.  Older, legacy systems are insufficient in providing value for bandwidth. Our investment in MPLS puts Cable & Wireless in an advantageous position.

"Not only are we able to offer quality guarantees to our customers, but we are using bandwidth more efficiently than before, which keeps their costs down.  This is a key difference in today's IP-VPN QoS solution versus our offerings in the past."

MPLS technology optimizes data network efficiency by enabling "labeling" of data packets according to their application, and assigning various priorities to different types of data.

Every customer using MPLS solutions such as IP-VPN QoS can define the applications most crucial to their business.

Prior to MPLS, getting greater speed and performance from data networks meant purchasing more bandwidth - with no guarantees.

With the new initiative C&W networks can better utilize existing bandwidth, reducing the cost per unit with networks working smarter, rather than just bigger, the company said.

"We are extremely proud to be able to offer the new IP-VPN QoS service which will bring tremendous benefits to our corporate customers, especially in the Cayman Islands where most of our business community is a part of the larger global marketplace," said Anthony Ritch, Vice President of Broadband and Voice, Cable & Wireless (Cayman Islands) Ltd.

"With the MPLS groundwork in place this will allow us to provide cost-savings, greater performance and reliability as well as numerous possibilities for our customers' corporate networks."

The move to MPLS technology transforms Cable & Wireless' data networks to be entirely Internet Protocol (IP)- based, so that they speak a common language that easily connects with hundreds of existing and future applications, the firm added.

The move to an IP-based architecture also enables easy global connectivity and offers heightened security via data encryption.

According to John Mazur, research director at Gartner Inc.'s telecommunications practice, "MPLS promises features that will revolutionize carrier network infrastructure and enable enhanced broadband service capabilities."

According to Senior Vice President, Data Services, Cable & Wireless Caribbean Enrique Camacho, the company has invested over US$10 million in delivering the IP-VPN solution over the new MPLS, and will continue to invest in training for technical and sales staff to support the solution.

"MPLS is a technology that we deployed in order to satisfy our customers' requirements for bandwidth, Quality of Service (QoS), and flexible routing between customers' premises," he said.

In order to support MPLS-based customer solutions, sales staff and technical teams are going through major training programmes - a significant investment in the technical community in the Caribbean, and in individual careers.