Sprint Uses SPEEDPORT™ for Charlottesville ADSL Trial

Fujitsu's DSL Access Multiplexer Has Top Transmission Performance

RICHARDSON, Texas, January 6, 1998 - For Sprint's trial of high-speed asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) technology in Charlottesville, Virginia, the service provider chose the SPEEDPORT™ digital subscriber line access multiplexer from Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc. Sprint personnel involved in the trial praised SPEEDPORT's performance on less-than-perfect copper telephone lines.

In the trial, Sprint extended a hospital's local area network and high-speed Internet access to several physicians' offices. This allowed the transfer of critical, high-resolution medical image files and other data from the hospital in seconds.

"I was impressed that the new SPEEDPORT DMT (discrete multi-tone) modems had the highest transmission performance of all the systems we evaluated," said Mike O'Shea, project manager for Sprint's xDSL trial. "They operated despite very high levels of interference noise and enabled us to achieve megabit rates on long lines that were previously considered unsuitable for high-speed data transfer.

"I particularly liked the high level of customer support and installation training provided by Fujitsu."

The SPEEDPORT solution, jointly developed by Fujitsu and partner Orckit Communications (NASDAQ: ORCTF), is based on a common 23-inch shelf, designed for NEBS compliance. It accepts rate-adaptive SDSL and DMT ADSL modem line cards and features 72 SDSL lines or 48 DMT ADSL modems per shelf, with concentration and management interfaces.

Customer modems have 10Base-T or ATM-25 interfaces. Both SDSL and ADSL modems support simultaneous voice telephone service.

"This was an important trial, and the fact that Sprint chose the SPEEDPORT access multiplexer after a competitive evaluation attests to its technical superiority," said David Self, director of corporate business development at Fujitsu.

"Our SPEEDPORT product is designed to handle a broad range of business and residential access needs. In this case, the full power of ADSL was needed to move medical images at a high speed. Another strength of the SPEEDPORT equipment is that it was also flexible enough to scale downward to lower bandwidths such as 384 or 768 kbps that may be more appropriate to residential users, or to serve users at greater distances from the central office."

Fujitsu has developed a comprehensive business case for the SPEEDPORT product, showing telecommunications providers how to provide DSL service profitably at a range of access speeds.

"Sprint has always demonstrated industry leadership in the development of new local services and applications" said Nigel Cole, vice president of business development for Orckit Communications, Fujitsu's partner. " In addition to testing higher speed Internet service, this experiment involved applications - such as fast medical data transfer - that could fully exploit the benefits of interconnecting LANs."

Sprint is a global communications company - at the forefront in integrating long distance, local and wireless communications services and one of the world's largest carriers of Internet traffic. Sprint built and operates the United States' only nationwide all-digital, fiber-optic network and is the leader in advanced data communications services. Sprint has $14 billion in annual revenues and serves more than 16 million business and residential customers.

Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc., designs and manufactures fiber-optic transmission and broadband switching platforms and develops software that allows customers to perform in-service management and monitoring of the telephone network. Its customers include local exchange carriers, interexchange carriers, competitive access providers and cable TV operators, as well as large private networks in North America. Fujitsu Network Communications is part of Fujitsu Limited, a $36 billion global technology leader in computers, communications and microelectronics. Product information is available by calling 800-777-FAST. Its World Wide Web site is at http://www.fnc.fujitsu.com.

Orckit Communications develops, manufactures and markets a wide range of high-speed local loop communications systems, including HDSL, ADSL, SDSL and VDSL. Orckit is an active participant in many standards bodies concerning ADSL. Orckit is a strategic partner of Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc., in North America. For more information about Orckit or its xDSL technologies, visit the company's World Wide Web site at http://www.orckit.com.

SPEEDPORT™ is a trademark of Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc.