Metromedia Fiber Network Goes West, Announces Major
Expansion Into San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley
July 17, 1998
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE) via NewsEdge
Corporation --
Company Also Gains Inter-city Links Connecting East
and West
Coasts
Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc. (Nasdaq:MFNX) today
announced plans to expand its intra-city dark fiber
network infrastructure to a strategic West Coast corridor,
adding the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley to
the growing list of Tier One markets in which the
Company plans to offer local fiber optic infrastructure.
The planned network is intended to cover in excess of
150 route miles, ringing the Bay Area, including many
vital Silicon Valley cities, such as San Jose and Santa
Clara, and encompassing key areas in downtown San
Francisco. The Company has recently signed a conduit
agreement within the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)
right-of-way for a portion of the network and plans to
start the fiber optic build process immediately.
The Company also announced the signing of a fiber
swap agreement with fONOROLA, a leading Canadian
telecommunications company, and fiber swap and related
agreements with Pacific Fiber Link, L.L.C., enabling
Metromedia Fiber Network to connect its existing fiber
optic infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor and
Chicago to the San Francisco Bay Area. These
agreements will give the Company the ability to provide
seamless connectivity from coast to coast. Customers
utilizing Metromedia Fiber Network's intra-city
infrastructure on both coasts will be able to use the
Company's inter-city links to connect locations in San
Francisco to locations in Chicago and New York and
across the Atlantic Ocean to London.
"This expansion means that carriers and corporations,
including the high-tech companies in San Francisco and
Silicon Valley's data-intensive communities, will be able
to take advantage of our unique unmetered, unlimited
bandwidth offering, which is already being met with
great enthusiasm in the Northeast," said Howard
Finkelstein, President of Metromedia Fiber Network.
"Increasingly organizations want to implement the latest
high-tech applications, and our service offerings allow
them to increase bandwidth as they need it in order to
utilize advanced technologies, such as ATM or voice
over IP, in a cost-effective way. When completed, our
network infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay Area will
allow us to provide major organizations throughout the
region with a high capacity on-ramp to the information
superhighway."
Metromedia Fiber Network's intra-city networks are
being constructed in major Tier One markets, connecting
key corporate centers, government buildings, and the
major switching centers of local and long distance
carriers. The networks employ state-of-the-art fiber optic
infrastructure and a ring configuration to provide
customers with diverse routing.
"By expanding into the San Francisco Bay Area, we will
have established the necessary foothold to launch a
West Coast network mirroring our current network in the
Northeast. We expect to continue to expand the number
of intra-city networks in Tier One cities in the future,
enhancing our position as the company that is
eliminating the bandwidth barrier for the largest users of
communications services," Finkelstein said.
Headquartered in the New York area, Metromedia Fiber
Network provides technologically advanced,
high-bandwidth, private, fiber optic communications
infrastructure within major U.S. markets. The Company
provides its infrastructure to communications carriers
competing in the local, long distance, wireless, and
Internet markets as well as corporate and government
customers requiring secure communications networks for
the transmission of large amounts of voice, data, and
video. Metromedia Fiber Network currently operates a
fiber optic metropolitan area network in New York and is
developing local fiber optic infrastructure along strategic
routes in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and
Boston, and an inter-city link between New York and
Washington D.C. The Company has established a joint
venture, known as ION(tm), with Racal Telecom of the
United Kingdom and will begin providing international
bandwidth capacity between the United States and the
United Kingdom in 1998. For more information about
Metromedia Fiber Network, please visit the company's
Web site at www.mmfn.com.
This news release contains certain forward-looking
statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Factors
that could cause or contribute to such risks and
uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general
economic and business conditions, competition,
changes in technology and methods of marketing, and
various other factors beyond the Company's control.
This also includes such factors as described from time to
time in the SEC reports filed by Metromedia Fiber
Network, including the most recently filed Form 10-Q.
CONTACT: G.S. Schwartz & Co | Media Relations | Judy
Sweeney/David King | 212-725-4500 |
dking@schwartz.com | or | G.A. Kraut Co. Inc. | Investor
Relations | Jeff Luth | 212-696-5600 |
