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.
