Verizon Installs Major Fiber-Optic Route Between Danville and Roanoke

DANVILLE, Va. - Danville has yet another on-ramp to the information
superhighway in the form of a newly installed 72-strand fiber-optic
cable. Verizon Communications recently completed the last leg of the
83-mile section of the high-speed, high-capacity cable, linking this
Southside Virginia community with Roanoke.

"The people of Danville and Roanoke now have, in effect, a six-lane
superhighway to the world," said Robert Woltz, president of Verizon
Virginia. "We're installing fiber-optics at an incredible pace
throughout the state, but the scope of this particular project
overshadows all the others."

Verizon launched work on its Danville-to-Roanoke link in July 1999.
Some 21 months later technicians finished their final splices on the
job, which costs $2.3 million.

The new cable provides an alternate, high-speed path for calls and data
traffic coming into and out of Danville. Previously, such calls had to
be routed through Lynchburg or Richmond.

"We're building redundancy into our network at every opportunity as a
safeguard for our customers," Woltz said. He explained that alternate
routes, like the one from Danville to Roanoke, help protect customers
from the possibility of downtime in the event of a cut cable or other
disruption to the network.

Not only will Danville benefit from the new cable, but so too will
customers throughout the Roanoke-Lynchburg-Danville triangle. In the
event a cable linking Roanoke and Lynchburg is cut or damaged, calls can
be routed through Danville and on to Lynchburg without the caller even
being aware of a disruption. Likewise, a call from Lynchburg to
Danville can be routed through Roanoke if need be.

Verizon's new cable passes through part of the U.S. 58 corridor west of
Danville, and then north into Roanoke.

The cable contains 72 glass fibers, each having a diameter about the
size of a human hair. Pulses of laser light surge through the fibers
carrying vast amounts of information. A single fiber can carry tens of
thousands of telephone conversations at one time.

However, most of the information speeding along the new cable is not in
the form of conversations, but is usually data. With the explosion in
Internet usage, Verizon's sophisticated network now handles far more
data than traditional voice traffic.

With this latest link in place, Verizon now has over one million miles
of fiber optics criss-crossing Virginia.

"More fiber is going in all the time," Woltz said. "We're proud to
have one of the most sophisticated telecommunications networks to be
found anywhere."

Verizon plans to invest over $900 million this year in Virginia, much of
which is earmarked for upgrades to existing infrastructure.

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Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) is one of the world's leading providers
of communications services. Verizon companies are the largest providers
of wireline and wireless communications in the United States, with
nearly 109 million access line equivalents and more than 27.5 million
wireless customers. Verizon is also the world's largest provider of
print and online directory information. A Fortune 10 company with
approximately 260,000 employees and more than $63 billion in annual
revenues, Verizon's global presence extends to 40 countries in the
Americas, Europe, Asia and the Pacific. For more information on Verizon,
visit www.verizon.com.

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