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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: drmorgan who wrote (11740)	1/20/1998 11:37:00 AM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

Crowe unveils Internet-based fiber-optic network USA Today James Crowe, who built MFS Communications and sold it to WorldCom for $14 billion, is going to try to create his second communications giant by proving that the big phone companies are obsolete. Monday, Crowe unveiled plans for Level 3 Communications, which will construct a nationwide fiber-optics network -- the first based entirely on Internet technology instead of switched telephone technology. Level 3 is backed by Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc., the Omaha construction group that originally financed MFS in 1987. Crowe did not reveal the start-up's funding, but he said it has enough capital to build networks all across the country. The company is a gamble that a network based on Internet Protocol (IP), which now carries mostly computer-to-computer Internet traffic, can carry voice and all other kinds of traffic as reliably and far more inexpensively than traditional telecommunications networks. The reliability, especially, is not yet proved. But, Crowe says, ''We believe IP is ready for prime time now, not in the future. These new networks are a lot less expensive than the traditional 100-year-old telephone networks.'' IP networks break all communications into tiny digital packets of information, which are efficiently routed through the network by computers and reassembled at the other end. By contrast, phone networks open a line, or circuit, between two parties for the duration of a call, even during silences when no information is being transmitted. That's a far less efficient use of the network. Level 3 plans to sell communications services to businesses, as MFS does, and resell capacity to other carriers, such as AT&T or Sprint. Level 3's system will convert phone calls, faxes and other non-Internet traffic to the digital packets of IP, transmit the packets through the Level 3 network, then turn that traffic back into regular phone and fax signals at the other end. Crowe had been on the board of Qwest Communications, another company building a new nationwide fiber network. Denver-based Qwest is using both telephone and IP technology. Crowe resigned from Qwest's board 30 days ago, he says. o~~~ O