Wholesale: News Briefs November 2000

Posted: 11/2000

News Briefs

* Former Teligent Inc. (www.teligent.com)
president and COO Kirby "Buddy" G. Pickle Jr. has been named
CEO of startup wholesaler PF.Net Communications Inc. (www.pf.net)
Pickle is the second high-profile telecom exec to join the company. Robert
Annuziata was appointed chairman in June. Pickle has served in senior
management at MFS Communications Co. Inc. (now part of WorldCom Inc., www.wcom.com),
including president and COO of its UUNet Technologies Inc. (www.uu.net)
subsidiary. He also has held management positions with Sprint Corp. (www.sprint.com)
MCI Commu- nications and AT&T Corp. (www.att.com).

* The network unit of Williams Commu-nications (www.williamscommunications.com)
has signed a 20-year, $93 million agreement to provide the nationwide backbone
for a new marine VHF radiotelephone network developed by MariTEL Inc. (www.maritelusa.com)
a national provider of VHF radiotelephone services to the maritime community in
the coastal United States. The MariTEL network, comprised of 286 radio towers
connected by the Williams network, will provide encrypted, automatic voice and
data communication services to commercial and recreational customers within 100
miles of the nation’s coastal and navigable waterways.

* Digital Teleport Inc. (www.dti-usa.com)
and EPIK Communications Inc. (www.epik.net)
have agreed to swap fiber optic facilities. DTI will receive building access and
1,800 route miles of dark fiber on EPIK routes in Florida and Georgia to
complete most of the gaps in its nationwide 20,000-mile network. Carrier’s
carrier EPIK will double its network, adding 2,922 route miles of dark fiber
spanning from Atlanta to Denver and reaching customers in 10 additional major
metropolitan areas. Under the agreement, EPIK and DTI also will provide
reciprocal collocation rights. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

* 360networks Inc. (www.360.net)
paid $162.5 million to acquire more than 11,000 miles of fiber from Call-Net
Enterprises Inc. (www.callnet.ca)
on routes connecting major cities in the United States and Canada. As part of
the exchange agreements, 360networks also will provide Call-Net with fiber
infrastructure between Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.

In addition, Call-Net has agreed to purchase approximately $14 million of
fiber from 360networks on local and long-haul routes throughout Canada and the
United States. Call-Net has committed to buy an additional $10 million in
products and services from 360networks during the next five years.

* Qwest Communications International Inc. (www.qwest.com)
signed a $24 million contract with Pac-West Telecomm Inc. (www.pacwest.com)
giving the California-based CLEC exclusive rights to an OC-48 optical transport
ring. Because of the agreement, Pac-West will provide high-speed transport
services, including Virtual DS-1, DS-3, OC-3 and OC-12. Qwest also will provide
collocation services for Pac-West.

* Wholesaler ITXC Corp. (www.itxc.com)
has deployed ExchangePlus IP switches from Lucent Technologies Inc. (www.lucent.com)
at all of its SuperPoPs and at several remote customer locations on its ITXC.net
Internet telephony network. The addition of IP capability to ExchangePlus means
that ITXC can use a single box to interface with other telephony switches as a
peer and to convert calls to and from IP. The flexibility enables ITXC to choose
best-of-breed vendors and to support carrier customers using multiple vendors.

* Broadband network service provider HTE8 (www.hte8.com)
announced in September that it will resell DSL-based, high-speed services from Rhythms
NetConnections Inc. (www.rhythms.com)
through its direct sales efforts and channel sales groups to medium-sized
businesses and multitenant units. The company sells its services through
resellers and agents, including ASPs, ISPs and independent sales
representatives.