WorldCom Turns Up First Pan-European Network Combining Local And Long Distance

WORLDCOM
TURNS UP FIRST PAN-EUROPEAN NETWORK COMBINING LOCAL AND LONG
DISTANCE

• Creates
  first facilities-based pan-European telecom company.

• Completes
  core of the end-to-end managed global network strategy.

• Meeting
  Europe's terabit demand for bandwidth, today.

Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, London, New York, Paris - 20th
July 1998

(NASDAQ: WCOM) today announced its pan-European fibre-optic
network is operational and new high-bandwidth services - including
the world's first building to building, on-net, international
ATM service - is commercially available. The 2,000-mile long
distance network connects existing WorldCom city networks in
London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Frankfurt. Together with the
Gemini transatlantic cable system and the company's existing US
local and long distance networks, over 27,000 office buildings in
the US and 4,000 buildings in Europe are now connected by a single
seamless, high capacity fibre-optic network.

"The European network is the centrepiece of WorldCom's
strategy to be the world's premier provider of telecom services
over its own facilities, owned and managed end-to-end," said
John Sidgmore, chief operations officer at WorldCom, Inc. "No
other company can match our ability to offer customers a combined
local/global, full function telecom and Internet service in the
multinational dimension. We are the first and only company to
attain the goal of a local-global-local service - and it's
delivered over our own networks and managed by our own
people," he said.

"Real" ATM

The new services available over the network include the first, real
international Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) service. Unlike any
other international service on the market, the WorldCom service
provides full ATM functionality at bandwidths between 2Mbps and
45Mbps with a common feature set, over a common technology platform
with full end-to-end management and control. The service is priced to
provide an effective migration path for existing Frame Relay
customers toward broadband networking speeds and functionality. (See
below Note to Editors: ATM)

New class of International Circuits

This new network also enables building-to-building private circuits
of STM-1 (155Mbps) and DS3 (45Mbps). These high capacity circuits,
hitherto the domain of the wholesale telecommunications carrier
market, are available on a retail basis. These new on- net circuits,
as well as the more traditional E1 (2Mbps) and fractional E1
circuits, will be the first in Europe to be provisioned by a single
company over a single network end-to-end. Previously such circuits
would be provisioned by up to four different organisations with
multiple interconnect points that are subject to network management
and cost overhead.

A Value Revolution

As a result of this single network infrastructure, WorldCom is able
to revolutionise the value to customers of their international
telecommunications by pricing both on-net international private
circuits and the ATM services independent of origin and destination.
Paris to London is priced the same as Paris to Frankfurt, Amsterdam
to London etc. etc. The arcane and arbitrary traditional methods of
settling international telecoms pricing between incumbent monopoly
PTTs has meant that circuits of equal distance, but crossing
different international boundaries, could vary in price by up to five
times. WorldCom's on-net circuits offer further exceptional value
as they are provisioned over a fully resilient SDH network,
eliminating the requirement for additional, diverse route circuits.

"We have just killed the idea that intra-European traffic is an
international market in the traditional sense," said John
Sidgmore. "Since the EC launched its farsighted, regional
liberalisation program, WorldCom has looked at the European market
opportunity in the same way that we have looked at the US long
distance market. Now our customers can buy that vision!"

A Major Infrastructure Project for the Terabit Age

WorldCom's pan-European fibre optic network is a major
telecommunications infrastructure project. Excluding the fibre optic
cable already installed as metropolitan area networks (MANs) in the
on-net cities, the pan-European network comprises 2,000 route miles
of fibre-optic cable, multiple repeater and regenerating stations and
two submarine crossings of the English Channel. The network is a
series of fully resilient, fibre-optic, Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
(SDH) loops that support multiple 2.5 gigabit channels per fibre pair
using wave division multiplexing (WDM) and optical amplifiers. The
current configuration provides 40 gigabits per second capacity.

WDM technology will support a capacity in the 10s of gigabits per
fibre pair and allow for rapid installation of additional capacity as
customer demands increase. Furthermore critical sections of the
network, including the submarine legs, are provisioned with 48 fibre
cables enabling the entire system to be readily upgraded to terabit
(1,000 gigabits per second) capacity as demand grows. Gemini
Submarine Cable Network is also a WDM-enabled SDH system currently
providing 40 gigabits capacity between New York and London.

Network management is provided by a hierarchy of management centres.
The pan-European network is controlled by the International Network
Operations and Control Centre (INOCC) in Amsterdam. The INOCC has
"visibility" of the entire long distance network including
services provided by Gemini and the US networks while each city's
Local Operations and Control Centre (LOCC) provides immediate support
to local customers. This control centre hierarchy enhances network
performance, resilience and customer support. The capability exists
for each control centre to have complete end-to-end visibility and
management of a circuit at customer premise equipment level.

Notes to Editors

ATM

ATM technology allows customers to consolidate different traffic
types onto a single back bone network platform. WorldCom's ATM
service can be configured to optimize transmission costs to traffic
type. A customer can order a single ATM service capable of supporting
all or any of the following:

Constant Bit Rate (CBR) where the customer is guaranteed delivery of
the bandwidth contracted for. This provides a solution for customers
requiring high performance of specific capacity circuits between
1Mbps and 8Mbps and is ideally suited to enable customers to
integrate critical and time sensitive applications such as voice and
video within the corporate data network.

Variable Bit Rate (VBR) where the customer is guaranteed a sustained
bit rate but is able to burst to predetermined limits to meet peak
traffic demands. VBR provides corporate customers with a solution to
the need to grow capacity on existing data networks where fast
response times are critical.

Available Bit Rate (ABR) where the customer does not receive a
guaranteed bit rate but is assured an average number of bits are
transferred over a given period of time. This provides customers with
a cost effective solution to non-delay and non-time sensitive
applications such as file transfer and email.

The service combining the three service types would provide a
customer with a single, consolidated and managed backbone to carrying
voice, traditional data, IP and video traffic between on-net sites
throughout Europe.

WorldCom International

A pan-European telecommunications company, WorldCom has operational
local interconnects with the incumbent telecommunications companies
in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden to
provide customers with national and international service. In Italy
and Switzerland the company provides international services. The
company has 45 public voice switches across Europe and the
company's own fibre optic network reaches over 4000 buildings
through high capacity circuits in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Brussels,
Amsterdam and Stockholm. Further metropolitan area networks are under
development in Hamburg, Duesseldorf, Rotterdam, Dublin and Zurich.

These operations enable the company to address a market generating
over 70% of Europe's gross domestic product.

WorldCom International is also developing its operations in the
Asia-Pacific region in step with deregulation in that market. It is
building metropolitan area networks in Sydney, Australia and Tokyo,
Japan and consolidating its non-facilities, resale businesses to
serve customer needs for connectivity to the regions other key
business centres. The company is also participating in two new
transpacific cable construction projects, US-Japan Cable Network
System and Southern Cross (Oceania to US).

WorldCom, Inc.

(NASDAQ:WCOM)

, is a global telecommunications company with 1997 revenues of $7.5
billion. With established operations in over 50 countries
encompassing the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions,
WorldCom is a premier provider of facilities-based and fully
integrated local, long distance, international and Internet Services.
WorldCom's global networks, including its state-of-the-art
pan-European network and transoceanic cable systems, provide
end-to-end connectivity to over 31,000 buildings worldwide.
WorldCom's World Wide Web address is: http://www.wcom.com. On
November 10, 1997, WorldCom announced a definitive merger agreement
with MCI Communications Corporation. The merger is expected to be
completed this Summer.