NEWS BRIEFS January 2000

Posted: 01/2000

NEWS BRIEFS

As part of its recent reorganization (see
story), Teleglobe Communications Corp., (www.teleglobe.com)
has formed a new business unit called Teleglobe Value Added Services (VAS) to
offer product and support to switchless resellers in the United States, Canada
and other countries.

Andrew Burroughs, the carrier’s former vice president of global marketing,
has been named vice president and general manager for the new unit. He says the
company already supports more than 30 switchless resellers in the United States.
The new unit will redouble Teleglobe’s efforts to service this segment with
emphasis on the nontraditional switchless reseller, or marketing company that
already has a distribution channel through ties to ethnic or other demographic
markets.

While Teleglobe VAS will offer standard long distance calling fare, it also
will serve up value-added services, such as 1-800-XXX-XXXX dial-around, voice
over Internet protocol (VoIP) and e-commerce services to tap into the
"higher margin, more loyal" customer base, Burroughs says.

In support of its plan to deploy a nationwide OC-48 IP optical fiber network,
Intermedia Communications Inc. (www.intermedia.com)
has purchased a meshed, 11-route OC-48 backbone from Williams Communications
Group Inc. (www.wilcom.com). Financial
terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Some of the routes are provisioned as wavelengths through Williams’ Optical
Wave Service. The balance will be traditional OC-48 private lines.

MCI WorldCom Inc. (www.wcom.com) has
launched Portfolio, a web-based portal providing its wholesale customers online
access to product catalogs, network management, products and service orders and
other service information. Other features include a communications library, an
events calendar, news (updated twice daily), outage notifications, conference
call scheduling and online training. Interactive customer service also is
available using the portal. The suite of applications supports MCI WorldCom’s
voice, data, local and global services.

The Rochester, N.Y.,-based Carrier Services division of Global Crossing
Ltd. (www.globalcrossing.com)
now offers its wholesale customers ATM transport over an OC-48 backbone at
speeds of nxT1 up to OC-12 by using inverse multiplexing over ATM (IMA).

This technique enables a carrier, for example, to aggregate multiple T1s
instead of moving to a T3. The service is priced based on the number of access
ports and permanent virtual circuits (PVCs) used. It is available in multiple
PVC classes, including constant bit rate, variable bit rate-real time, variable
bit rate–nonreal time and unspecified bit rate.

Genesis Communications International Inc. (www.genesiscom.com)
has announced a switchless reseller program designed for resellers and carriers
that have their own carrier identification code (CIC) but no facilities. As part
of the program, Genesis also will assist non-CIC-based resellers in obtaining
CIC codes