BT (News - Alert), one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions and services, has expanded BT Ethernet Connect, the Ethernet service, in U.S. and Canada to meet growing customer demand.

BT Ethernet Connect is global Ethernet virtual private network (VPN) service that enables large organizations to evolve and grow their infrastructure while maintaining control of their IP architecture.

Officials with BT said that BT Ethernet Connect is ideal for a range of applications including connecting data centers and organizations that wish to design and manage their IP layer.

Company officials said that in addition to the new nodes added in Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Newark, N.J. and Toronto, Canada, three access resilience options are now also available. These are-Standard that offers a single physical connection from the BT point of presence (POP) to the customer site; Diverse, which offers two accesses that are delivered to the same BT POP and Diverse+ which offers two accesses that are delivered to different POPs.

According to company officials, BT Ethernet Connect has been certified by the Metro Ethernet Forum to its standards MEF (News - Alert) 9 and 14.  These standards provide independent validation of the conformance and performance of Ethernet services.

"At BT we continue to expand our service offerings to meet our customers' growing needs for global communications,” said Kim McMann, president, BT U.S. and Canada, in a statement. 

“With our ability to provide IP VPN services in more than 170 countries and territories and Ethernet VPN services in 28 countries, multinational customers with operations in the U.S. and Canada rely on us to keep them connected and to provide value-added services that let them focus on their core business, not their networked IT infrastructure," said McMann.