LONDON, UK (18 May 2001) -WAM!NET, a provider of global information technology and digital media solutions, today announced its selection by award winning international magazine, The Economist, to provide fast, secure, network connectivity between its London based publishing headquarters and seven (7) print sites world wide: UK (St Ives), Singapore (Times Printers), Switzerland (Druckerei, Winterthur), Hong Kong (Times Ringier), Holland (Rota Smeets) and USA (Perry Judds in Virginia and Quebecor World in California). "WAM!NET™ Direct!® has completely revolutionalised our production and print workflows enabling us to provide a better product to our customers and still realise greater production efficiencies," says head of publishing systems, Roy Saunders. "We now send all 6 editions (160-240 pages each) to our global print sites over a 24-hour period - and after the launch of our full colour redesign last week, a considerable saving in time and cost over our previous point to point leased circuits." "The last 40 editorial pages are commonly transmitted in the final hours before deadline," Saunders continues, "providing us with the ability to print the latest breaking news possible in each edition." As a result of the production efficiencies enabled by WAM!NET Direct!, the newspaper has moved to a four-colour format for the first time - without the need to extend editorial or print deadlines. "Printing the worldwide editions in four colour, with no loss in production efficiencies, has allowed us to realise a long term goal," enthuses Saunders. "We are extremely pleased with the ability to increase our consumer offering and continue to set innovation standards within publishing." "Increasing numbers of publishers worldwide are realising that unlike ISDN or leased lines which can be very expensive in some regions (and which are slow and not always dependable in terms of bandwidth availability), WAM!NET Direct! provides a fast, reliable, secure, and fully-managed service which can be scaled to meet customer requirements whatever the traffic volume", says Chris Friend, WAM!NET European managing director. "We are proud to play a key part in The Economist's global digital production workflow initiatives."