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Technology Stocks : AboveNet Communications, Inc. (ABOV) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Miller who wrote (316)	4/5/1999 2:37:00 PM
From: Rick McDougall	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 835

Monday April 5, 7:00 am Eastern Time Company Press Release SOURCE: AboveNet Communications, Inc. AboveNet Announces London ISX as the Third European Facility Along With Austria and Germany SAN JOSE, Calif., April 5 /PRNewswire/ -- AboveNet Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: ABOV - news), the architect of a global one-hop network that brings together high-bandwidth content sites and ISPs in centralized co-location facilities, today announced it has formed a strategic joint venture with two of the UK's leading telecommunications entrepreneurs to build a regional Internet Service Exchange(TM) (ISX(TM)) in London, England. The two partners, Bill Dobbie and Angus MacSween, were the founders of Teledata, a leading call center and Internet services company. Today's announcement marks the third European ISX joint venture to be established as a part of AboveNet's European expansion plan. With its presence in the UK and the German markets AboveNet can reach a substantial number of the European Internet population. AboveNet is working to form a series of joint ventures with experienced Internet management teams and strategic partners to create regional ISXs in the major business centers across Europe. Mr. Dobbie and Mr. MacSween bring a wealth of knowledge to the partnership, as well as more than 10 years' experience in the UK telecommunications industry. They built Teledata, which was a pioneer in the UK call center and audiotex business, and attracted customers such as Microsoft, Compaq and Eurodisney. After selling Teledata to Scottish Telecom in 1995, Mr. Dobbie and Mr. MacSween became Directors of Scottish Telecom and were responsible for the acquisition and integration of DEMON Internet, the UK's largest ISP. During that time they managed a fivefold increase of revenues of their original company which contributed significantly to the value of Scottish Telecom. Through this alliance, AboveNet will provide the network architecture model, network intelligence and software technology necessary to create the UK ISX facility. AboveNet will be the exclusive provider of connectivity services to the ISX and it will be linked directly into AboveNet's Global One Hop Network(TM) through its own STM1 link, which now terminates at the London Internet Exchange (LINX). The facility for the London ISX has already been selected in the London Docklands, and is scheduled in the second half of 1999. The London ISX will provide a robust, scalable Internet infrastructure designed to handle the accelerating Internet traffic growth occurring in Europe. ''We believe Bill and Angus have the entrepreneurial and management skills to make our joint venture a market leader in the UK. We look forward to working closely with them towards that goal,'' said Dr. Paul Steiner, Vice President, International-Europe for AboveNet. ''A world class facility in the UK is key to delivering our Global One Hop Network to Europe to provide our customers with a convenient, powerful solution to Internet congestion.'' ''We are pleased to work with AboveNet because we share a similar vision of improving the Internet experience worldwide,'' said Bill Dobbie, Managing Director of AboveNet UK Limited. ''AboveNet consistently provides a flexible, reliable and scalable solution that we believe will meet the needs of our European customers. We are happy to leverage AboveNet's position and experience and provide our customers with transit services immediately and co-location as soon as the ISX facility is operational.'' ''We believe the UK market offers one of the largest potential Internet market in Europe and is key for our European strategy,'' said Warren J. Kaplan, President and Chief Operating Officer of AboveNet. ''Traditionally, the UK is one of the first European markets to follow US trends, and this is already clearly happening in our target market areas.'' The European Regional ISX facilities are being designed to deliver to local communities a fast, reliable and scalable Internet solution for mission- critical and high bandwidth applications. These facilities will co-locate content providers and ISPs together to deliver superior connectivity for local access and a direct link into AboveNet's global network. We believe ISX members will benefit from improved Internet performance and reliability as a result of the Company's extensive global peering arrangements with more than 210 major ISP networks.