Williams Communications Solutions (Houston, TX) has landed a $6.1 million, five-year contract from

Williams Communications Solutions (Houston, TX) has landed a $6.1 million, five-year contract from the University of Dayton (Dayton, OH) to provide network infrastructure and co-develop technologies. The project will begin this summer, when Williams starts work on a fiber-optic network in three student neighborhoods within a half mile of the university campus. The infrastructure work, which includes an extension of the existing campus network and the installation of a new telephone system, is slated to be finished in August 1999. The agreement also calls for the two parties to develop and test interactive learning applications that can be marketed nationally, with the university acting as a beta site.

Williams (Tulsa, OK) inked a 20-year indefeasible right of use agreement worth approximately $450 million with Intermedia Communications, an independent competitive local exchange carrier. Williams will provide Intermedia with transmission capacity at rates up to OC-192 (10 Gbits/sec). At the same time, Williams filed a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment that would force WorldCom Inc. (Jackson, MS) to lease capacity on its fiber-optic network to Williams. The suit stems from a 1994 contract that saw the management of Williams sell its WilTel Network Services business to WorldCom. The deal included a three-year noncompete clause that recently expired--and allegedly a provision that called for WorldCom to lease capacity on its network to Williams upon completion of the noncompete provision. At issue is whether the additional network capacity acquired by WorldCom after the Williams deal--which includes infrastructure from the acquisition of mfs, Brooks Fiber, and mci--should be made available to Williams. The suit also alleges that WorldCom has interfered with a Williams customer and denied the company access to a strand of fiber in WorldCom`s network that was to be set aside for its use in the 1994 agreement.