American nation of Chile and plans are to connect the country with more than 200 cities worldwide.

Global Crossing made the announcement yesterday and said that the connection would be complete by the first quarter of next year.

"Global Crossing's network will enable dramatically increased Internet connection speeds, and support bandwidth-intensive applications such as telemedicine, distance learning, streaming video and audio,'' a release from the company said yesterday.

Offering one of the world's most extensive IP-based fibre-optic networks, the Global Crossing cable landed in Valparaiso, Chile yesterday.

"The cable landing in Chile marks another major step towards the completion of our Latin America network, which will revolutionise the way telecommunications services are provided in the region,'' said Patrick Joggerst, Global Crossing's president for South America.

"We expect to fully connect Brazil and Argentina in November of this year, and expand our connection to Santiago, Chile, by early 2001.'' The Valparaiso cable station will be linked to Santiago, Chile, via a 200-kilometre terrestrial fibre-optic connection. To the east from Santiago, SAC will cross the Andes Mountains to connect Mendoza, Cordoba, Rosario and Buenos Aires in Argentina, then travel north along the Atlantic coast of South America to connect Brazil.

SAC will travel north from Valparaiso to connect Peru, Colombia and Venezuela.

The system will then link with other Global Crossing network systems in St.

Croix, USVI, offering seamless connectivity to the rest of the Global Crossing network.

SAC will feature roughly ten times the capacity of current telecommunication systems serving Latin America, dramatically increasing availability of bandwidth to allow for the development of new applications in the transmission of voice, data and Internet communications.

The system will enable Internet service providers in the region to offer faster connection speeds, leading to quicker downloads and supporting popular applications such as streaming audio and video.