Carrier Channel: NEWS BRIEFS

Posted: 6/2003

NEWS BRIEFS

* France-based ComoreTel has
partnered with Teleglobe Inc. to improve its international toll-free
services by offering worldwide toll-free dialing from an additional 76
countries, bringing its total access to about 100 countries. ComoreTel’s
Global269 provides freephone access from countries around the world through just
one number.

ComoreTel chose Teleglobe as a
wholesale service provider to take advantage of its extensive Global Network
coverage and ability to offer ITF services from so many countries. "ComoreTel’s
partnership with Teleglobe to offer international toll-free services enables us
to generate international toll-free calls from a number of countries previously
unavailable from our network," says Paul Mumford, vice president of
international sales.

* LayerOne Inc., a
Dallas-based company providing telecommunications infrastructure solutions
through neutral network interconnection facilities, announced it has named
Brandon Freeman president and CEO. Freeman, who has served as COO since
co-founding LayerOne in the fall 1999, succeeds Alexander Muse. Freeman has been
responsible for the day-to-day management of LayerOne since its inception,
including oversight of engineering, national service deployment, sales and
marketing.

* Broadband carriers Covad
Communications Co. and New Edge Networks Inc. announced a partnership
to expand their coverage areas. Under the agreement, Covad expands its reach to
600 telephone exchanges in about 360 small and midsized cities and eight more
states: Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota
and Wyoming. New Edge gets access to Covad’s network, which covers central
offices in 96 large metro regions. The networks do not overlap, says New Edge
spokesman Sal Cinquegrani.

* PPL Telcom LLC, a
subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based based utility company PPL Corp., on Tuesday
closed an agreement to buy the assets of bankrupt wholesale carrier Cambrian
Communications LLC. Financial details of the deal were not immediately
available. PPL is acquiring a 1,330-route mile network that includes 29 points
of presence and reaches Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey and
New York City, says PPL Telcom marketing manager Charles Boddy. PPL Telcom,
which sells high-speed bandwidth services to Internet providers, carriers and
enterprises, owns a core network in Northeast Pennsylvania. "The networks
are very complementary. There is no duplication," says Boddy. "We
don’t overlap."

Boddy says PPL likely will retain
some Cambrian employees, but he declined to say how many. As part of the
agreement, PPL also is transitioning customers of Cambrian to PPL, Boddy says.
However, he declined to reveal their names or how much revenue they represent.

* Broadband service provider DSL.net
Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of
the assets and subscribers of Wilmington, N.C.-based TalkingNets, an
all-IP converged communications service provider. The value of the deal was not
disclosed. The TalkingNets transaction, which came on the heels of the
acquisition of network assets and related subscriber lines from Network Access
Solutions Corp., expands DSL.net’s network infrastructure and footprint.
TalkingNets has business customers in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.