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To: KevRupert who wrote (6240)	4/4/2000 11:44:00 PM
From: KevRupert	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11568

BR Test Site for MCI Wireless Service The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA) March 8, 2000 Baton Rouge is one of three markets where MCI WorldCom has begun testing wireless services that allow high-speed connections to the Internet using special radio frequencies. The wireless services, also being tested in Jackson, Miss., and Memphis, Tenn., are designed to serve business and residential customers in rural and urban areas that don?t have access to high-speed Internet connections through cable or phone lines, said spokesman Joe Paluska. "For us it?s another pipe to the customer," he said. "If we can reach them through the land line we will, if we can reach them through the air we will." Baton Rouge became a test site as the result of MCI WorldCom?s acquisition of a company familiar to this area, called Wireless One. It is among assets MCI WorldCom is using for its "fixed" high-speed wireless Internet service. Wireless One started out as a wireless cable service. It relocated to Jackson, Miss., in 1997 after a merger and a management shake-up. It later filed for bankruptcy court protection. MCI WorldCom, a Clinton, Miss.-based telecommunications company with $37 billion in revenue, acquired Wireless One out of bankruptcy last year. "With the technology we have in place, wireless lets us immediately serve residential and business customers in these markets ? which is exactly what we?re doing today," John Stupka, president of MCI WorldCom Wireless Solutions, said in a news release. The radio frequency being used in the current test is similar to one that is expected to be authorized later this year by the Federal Communications Commission, Paluska said. Known as Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service, or MMDS, it will be capable of serving a 35-mile radius from towers or other structures. The tests now under way are MCI WorldCom?s first step toward rolling out high-speed wireless Internet service to other markets later this year after the company receives license approval from the FCC. That process will accelerate to include up to 100 cities by late 2001, after MCI WorldCom merges with Sprint and the two companies combine their efforts, Paluska said. Sprint is testing its own high-speed wireless Internet services in Detroit, Phoenix and San Francisco, Paluska said. MCI WorldCom?s tests include two separate products: Warp 310, a high-speed residential wireless service for those who surf the Internet, and Warp One, which businesses can use for Internet access and to operate Web sites, Paluska said. Warp 310 is being tested at an apartment complex in Jackson. Its speed is 310 Kilobits per second, easily beating speeds of traditional 28K or 56K dial-up modems and is comparable to having what is known as a Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL service, the company said. Warp 310 service will soon be available, not only to apartment complexes but also residences in entire neighborhoods. Using a $100 card to initiate service on their personal computers, Warp 310 customers receive unlimited usage for $39.95 a month, without the extra cost of an additional phone line into the home, Paluska said. The Warp One business product is being offered in all three MCI WorldCom test markets, Paluska said. In Baton Rouge, more than two dozen business customers, representing several hundred individual users, are testing out Warp One. Its speed ranges from 128 Kilobits per second, comparable to what is known as an ISDN service line, up to 2 Megabits per second, which is slightly faster than T1 or DSL line. The company is testing a variety of packages, speed and prices for the business service, Paluska said.