Brooks Fiber chooses Cascade's CBX 500 ATM Switch for official nationwide backbone.

WESTFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 1996--Cascade Communications Corp. (NASDAQ: CSCC) today announced that Brooks Fiber Properties, Inc., (NASDAQ: BFPT) a leading provider of competitive local telecommunications services in mid-sized U.S. cities, has chosen the CBX 500 ATM Switch (formerly the Cascade 500) as its official ATM platform nationwide.

The initial deployment will be in an Arizona health network, allowing four medical facilities to share a single corporate network supporting voice, video, and data. With the CBX 500 ATM switch at its core, the new network will easily handle a wide variety of traffic including voice conversations, medical images, and patient data files. Brooks Fiber will be integrating the ATM switches with Cascade B-STDX 9000 Frame Relay Multiservice Switches already in place.

"Our experience with Cascade has been excellent," said Jerry Lack, Director of Advanced Technology, Brooks Fiber. "We already have deployed Cascade's B-STDX 9000 Frame Relay switches. Their strengths in port density and scaleability weighed heavily as we evaluated all ATM options."

The standards-compliant CBX 500 provides the industry's highest scaleability on a single platform, enabling customers to easily and cost-effectively expand networks as requirements dictate. The CBX 500 was built to deliver on the multiservice capabilities of ATM. To guarantee that diverse traffic types do not interfere with each other as they traverse the same network, Cascade has employed a Quad Plane Architecture and Quality of Service (QoS) aware routing. Cascade's Quad Plane Architecture dynamically manages the QoS-dedicated buffers to guarantee the performance required by each traffic class.

"The cost of managing several separate networks to handle a high range of traffic was very expensive for the hospitals. By pooling their resources and building a single network, they are reducing costs considerably," said Chris Baldwin, ATM Business Manager for Cascade Communications Corp. "This system will serve as a model for Brooks Fiber networks nationwide."

About Cascade Communications Corp.

Cascade Communications Corp. (NASDAQ: CSCC) is at the forefront of broadband data communications with its family of scaleable, carrier-class Frame Relay, ATM, and Remote Access switching products. Used by public carriers and Internet service providers worldwide, Cascade's products are forming the foundation of the public network infrastructure for global communications. Cascade is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts, USA, with offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia/Pacific.

About Brooks Fiber Properties

Brooks Fiber Properties Inc., headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is a leading full service provider of competitive local telecommunications services in medium-sized cities across the United States. With networks operational or under development in thirty U.S. cities, the company provides its customers with the most advanced and reliable high capacity voice, video, data and other enhanced services on the market.

CONTACTS: Cascade Communications Corp.

Lucia Graziano, 508/692-2600

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Melissa Thompson

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