Williams Spends $200 Million on Corvis Equipment

COLUMBIA, MD--Corvis Corporation, a leader in delivering the all-opticalInternet, today announced it has signed an agreement with Williams Communications with a potential value of$200 million.

As part of the agreement, Corvis will supply its innovative suite of all-optical products for deployment in the WilliamsMulti-Service Broadband Network upon the successful completion of a field trial. Announced last year, the trial will testCorvis equipment along Williams' Houston-Washington, D.C. route. Williams has already completed extensive laboratory testingof the gear.

Williams plans to deploy Corvis' revolutionary bandwidth management solution. The Corvis Wave Planner will allow Williamsto perform wavelength planning, wavelength provisioning as well as path restoration and protection management, all with the"click of a mouse."

The Corvis system allows the transmission of optical signals up to 3,200 kilometers without electrical regeneration. Byincreasing the optical transparency of the network, carriers can significantly decrease network costs while eliminating theoperational complexity and cost of adding regenerators each time an OC-48 or OC-192 circuit is needed.

http://www.corvis.com/Corvis_in_the_News/Corvis_Press_Releases/Press_Release_4_13_00/press_release_4.13.00.html