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Technology Stocks : Newbridge Networks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pat mudge who wrote (12770)	8/16/1999 11:21:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18016

Bloomberg: MCI WorldCom Says Frame-Relay Network Back in Operation Technology News bloomberg.com Mon, 16 Aug 1999, 10:55am EDT MCI WorldCom Says Frame-Relay Network Back in Operation Following Repairs By Jeff Bliss MCI Says Network Operating; CBOT Trading Back Online (Update1) (Adds comments from Chicago Board of Trade and MCI) Clinton, Mississippi, Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- MCI WorldCom Inc., the No. 2 U.S. long-distance telephone company, said a U.S. telecommunication network was brought back on line after it was shut down to fix trouble plaguing the system for more than a week. The restart allowed the Chicago Board of Trade, the largest U.S. derivatives exchange which provides access to futures based on U.S. Treasuries, stock indexes and grains, to start its round- the-clock electronic trading worldwide on Sunday, a CBOT spokesman said. ``MCI network is now working for the most part of the day,' said Bret Gallaway, a spokesman for CBOT, where electronic trading started at 6 p.m. local time on Sunday. Still, ``CBOT has a backup plan to connect traders' terminals in case the MCI network goes down,' again. CBOT uses MCI's networks to connect its so-called Project A terminals worldwide with its trading system in Chicago, enabling members to trade 22 hours-a-day, six days a week except Saturdays. Project A accounts for 1 million contracts a month, or about 5 percent of the exchange's total. The MCI network problem started Aug. 5 with glitches forcing CBOT to halt trading for four full days until yesterday. As many as 30 percent of the 3,000 businesses that use Clinton, Mississippi-based MCI WorldCom's high-speed network to access the Internet and send e-mail have had trouble with these services since late Aug. 5. The problem may have affected about 10 percent of America Online Inc. and CompuServe customers as well, AOL said. Damage The network, one of several operated by MCI WorldCom, was taken down Saturday and remained out of operation until noon Eastern time Sunday, an MCI spokeswoman said. Before the shutdown, MCI WorldCom said some customers of Internet service providers may not be able to access their service during the repairs. The shutdown idled CBOT's the electronic trading system, Trading was intermittently halted for parts of seven of the past eight days, said Gallaway at CBOT. The exchange's auction-style trading pits, where almost 95 percent of CBOT contracts are bought and sold in face-to-face transactions, weren't affected by the network failure. The exchange hasn't heard from MCI WorldCom since CBOT President Thomas R. Donovan wrote a letter to Bernard J. Ebbers, MCI WorldCom president and chief executive threatening legal action against MCI because of recurring disruptions to its business, said Gallaway. CBOT said earlier it's considering switching to another service provider. ``We're watching MCI very closely so that it continues to provide the quality of services we require,' Gallaway said. Linda Laughlin, a spokeswoman for MCI Worldcom, said senior managers at the company were ``in close consultation' with counterparts at CBOT. The outages come at a time when electronic trading is growing. About 12 million contracts were traded on the CBOT's Project A system last year, up from about 6 million in 1997 and 3 million in 1996, the exchange said. During July, the average daily volume on Project A was 45,000 contracts. The CBOT charges customers $4 to buy and sell a financial futures contract and $5 to trade agricultural contracts. Project A, in almost five years of electronic trading, has never had an outage of this duration. The CBOT had been discussing problems with the system's speed with MCI Worldcom before the outage.