Loral Skynet has teamed with Global Crossing to provide a communications network to the British Council, a not-for-profit organization sponsored by the British government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Loral Skynet announced.

Loral Skynet of Bedminster, NJ, will combine its satellites with Global Crossing’s terrestrial infrastructure to create an Internet Protocol-based virtual private network that provides high-speed two-way data services such as Internet and e-mail access, large file transfers and videoconferencing services.

The network will interconnect 130 British Council offices around the globe at uplink speeds of up to 2 megabits per second and downlink speeds of up to 512 kilobits per second.

Loral Skynet also will install hardware at the remote offices and provide network management and support from its Rockville, MD-based network operations center.

Loral Skynet also provides infrastructure and global support to Global Crossing for the British government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Telecommunications Network, which connects 240 sites in 140 countries.