All the fiber that was Wiltel went with the sale to LDDS. There was a portion of Wiltel that was not sold to LDDS and that was Vyvx. Williams retained the Wiltel name and I believe Vyvx is now called Wiltel and is still part of the Williams Companies out of Tulsa. I believe part of the sale agreement was that Williams retained one fiber strand out of every fiber run Wiltel (the original one) had. So Williams (Wiltel) still has alot of fiber capacity.

---------- From: Peter Leppik[SMTP:pleppik@mail.wessels.com] Sent: Thursday, July 17, 1997 10:05 AM To: 'johnl@iecc.com' Cc: 'nanog@merit.edu' Subject: RE: BOOM! there goes WorldCom

I was relying on an article which crossed my desk a few weeks ago, and now I can't find it again. My apologies if my memory failed me; it wouldn't be the first time.

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-----Original Message----- From: johnl@iecc.com [SMTP:johnl@iecc.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 1997 8:43 PM To: Peter Leppik Subject: Re: BOOM! there goes WorldCom

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carriers. Qwest also bought a boatload of fiber from Williams Pipeline Co. some time ago, and signed a contract with Williams which locked Williams out of the business of deploying new fiber until early 1998 (Williams runs fiber through unused oil and gas pipelines, having discovered that fiber optics is more of a growth industry than schlepping around fermented dinosaurs).

That is most bizarre. Williams has been in the fiber business for ages, their fiber subsidiary was Wiltel which was the 4th or 5th largest IXC by volume (mostly resold to other carriers) when it was sold and merged into LDDS/Worldcom in early 1995. Are you saying that after they spun off Wiltel, Williams went back into the fiber stringing business?

-- John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47