Mobile workers given global access to HQ

A virtual private network designed to give mobile employees access to their corporate LANs is being tested by a telecoms consortium.

According to Peter Crowcombe, analyst at Spikes Cavell, the VPN's most notable feature is its accessibility through local phone lines from anywhere in the world. "It's a short term solution to the difficulty of providing high-speed network capability for mobile workers," he said.

The Global Intranet Access project has been developed by the Multimedia Services Affiliate Forum (MSAF). MSAF is a consortium of telecoms operators, including AT&T and Cable & Wireless, which together carry almost 70 per cent of the world's communications traffic. There are also software and hardware providers in the group including Cisco, Microsoft, Netscape, Oracle and Sun.

Crowcombe added: "It's not the technology, but the support from so many telecoms giants that makes it possible - as in so many things, its not what you know, its who you know." MSAF chose a standards-based L2PT architecture to maximise security on the Internet-based network. The group will lead phase one of technology trials, starting this month. Phase two trials will be passed over to service providers.