Carrier Channel: News Briefs September 2000

Posted: 09/2000

News Briefs

Integrated communications provider BTI Telecom Corp. (www.btitele.com) and TollBridge Technologies Inc.
(www.tollbridgetech.com) have formed a partnership that will let BTI offer voice over DSL
(VoDSL) services. BTI will deploy the TB200 platform, which translates information between BTI’s local switch and its high-speed ATM network. The gateway enables the delivery of voice and data as IP telephony over broadband networks.

BTI also is expanding its fiber network serving the Research Triangle Park and Durham, N.C. The company will add 38 miles to its 100-mile SONET fiber ring to provide service to customers in the Durham and Chapel Hill, N.C. areas.

*Lightyear Communications
(www.lightyearcom.com), a Louisville, Ky.-based
ICP, has deployed its initial eight network sites. The cities hosting those sites are Anaheim, Calif.; Atlanta; Boston; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Indianapolis; Louisville and Newark, N.J.

Lightyear will provide services to small and medium-sized business customers over a packetized edge network over which data, Internet and voice will be transmitted via ATM.

Lightyear also recently signed a $10 million contract with Accelerated Networks Inc.
(www.acceleratednetworks.com) for equipment.

*Chicago-headquartered Focal Com-munications Corp.
(www.focal.com), a facilities-based CLEC, has begun providing voice and date communications services to Cleveland, bringing the number of cities it services to 19. Focal, which markets its services to such high-end communications users as large corporations, ISPs and value-added resellers, plans to deploy its services to 24 markets nationwide, including Baltimore, Miami, Minneapolis, St. Louis and San Diego.

*Choice One Communications
(www.choiceonecom.com), an integrated communications provider headquartered in Rochester, N.Y., plans to offer voice and data telecommunications services to Indianapolis; Ann Arbor/Lansing, Mich.; and Richmond, Va. by the end of the second quarter of 2001. Previously, the company announced a definitive merger agreement with US Xchange LLC
(www.usxchange.com), based in Grand Rapids, Mich.

*CTC Communications Group Inc.
(www.ctcnet.com), a Waltham, Mass.-based ICP, has installed and activated its IntelliNET network in Philadelphia and Baltimore. The network will provide services to business customers in those metro areas as part of CTC’s East Coast expansion.