Global Fiber to Build New Mediterranean Cable Network; Unique Venture Will Link Spain, France and Italy.

MALAGA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 1999--

Global Fiber Holding Company (GFH) today announced at Carrier Wholesale Market - Winter '99 sponsorship of the development of MedFiber, a 3.600-kilometer submarine fiber optic ring cable network that will link Spain, France and Italy.

The ring network will have a design capacity of 2.4 Terabits/sec (Tb/s) and will be ready for service by late fourth quarter 2000. MedFiber is unique because it is comprised of two sub-networks with individual characteristics.

GFH is sponsored by a joint venture lead by Global Fiber Group LLC (GFC), a new submarine fiber optic cable development company based in the U.S. whose members are formerly part of AT&T's submarine cable planning and operations group.

The ring's Northern segment will connect Barcelona, Spain, and Savona, Italy, and five intermediate locations: Ampurias in Spain, and Agde, Marseilles, Le Lavandou, and Nice in France. It will be a non-repeatered system comprised of 24 fiber pairs. Six of 24 fiber pairs will be used for a self-healing regional ring Network and provide terrestrial connectivity to city centers and other international/transoceanic systems via the landing points.

The Southern Segment will be a repeatered system linking Savona with Rome, Mazara, Valencia and Barcelona, and will close the self-healing ring. Through the Mazara landing point, MedFiber will be able to connect to various systems running onward to the Middle East as well as the Atlantic Ocean routes.

"When combined, these sub-networks will form a high-capacity, self-healing ring that will provide an optimal capacity solution for the region, making it a unique regional network," said Dan Campbell, Principal of GFG.

Initially, the network will be equipped to support a traffic capacity of 8X2.5 Gbits/sec on two fiber pairs. Ultimately, the network will support a capacity of up to 40 X 10 gigabits per second per fiber pair, with the ring portion of the network having 2.4 terabits per second in a self-healing configuration.

"This configuration makes the ring portion of the network one-hundred percent self-healing," Campbell said.

Two phases of deployment are planned. Phase 1, consisting of both the Northern and Southern segments, is expected to be ready for service by the end of fourth quarter 2000. Phase 2 will be the first capacity upgrade for the network.

Under terms of the agreement, Global Fiber Holding has negotiated a comprehensive, turnkey contract with Alcatel for the engineering, supply and installation of the network. Alcatel will undertake the engineering, supply and construction of the network, provide upgrades that meet performance requirements while providing the ongoing Operations and Maintenance of the network as stipulated by GFH.

The turnkey supply and O&M contracts have been negotiated and construction is already underway. The equity for the project is being contributed by the project sponsors and additional equity commitments are in the final stages of consideration from leading telecom private equity investors, including Providence Equity partners Inc. of Rhode Island and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners III, L.P. The debt financing arrangements have been mandated to Deutshe Bank and Goldman Sachs & Co.