In the transition planning, Merit and ANS had anticipated that many of the regionals which use the NSFNET Backbone Service for inter-regional connectivity would have completed their migration to new service providers by October 31, 1994. No regionals have yet completed this migration. Anticipating the retirement of the NSFNET Backbone Service at College Park, Alternet issued a termination notice for the MAE-East connection for October 31st. In addition, the MAE-East Ethernet segment is saturated and the new MAE-East+ FDDI colocation facility exists. In response to all these issues, Merit and ANS plan to maintain support for SURAnet and upgrade the NSFNET Backbone Service to MAE-East+. In the interim, since the NSFNET Backbone Service to SURAnet at College Park will continue for the near term and since it is important to maintain the continuity of service to MAE-East, ANS has offered to support the MAE-East connection at College Park. On behalf of the NSFNET project, Merit thanks Alternet for its previous support to the project and ANS for its continuing support. --Elise