Viatel Names Bechtel Construction Project Manager For Ring Two Of The Circe Pan-european Network

Bechtel has already begun work on portions of Ring Two, those linking Amsterdam to Essen in Germany as well as those linking Paris to Bar le Duc, Nancy and Strasbourg in France. Construction of Circe's second ring is scheduled for completion in September 1999.

"We at Viatel are pleased Bechtel Telecommunications will continue as a Circe Network partner," said Michael J. Mahoney, Viatel's president and chief executive officer. "The Bechtel team has done an outstanding job so far and we have the same very high expectations of the company for the second ring."

"Building the Circe Pan-European Network--within the strict time, cost, and quality parameters set for us--has been challenging," said George Conniff, President, Bechtel Telecommunications. "But it's clear--given our selection as the construction manager on Ring Two--that we have what it takes to get the job done right. We appreciate Viatel's confidence in us and look forward to continuing our close working relationship with its management team."

Viatel's Circe Pan-European Network is a next-generation broadband infrastructure that is configured as three interlocking rings. When completed, the 5,200-route kilometer network will connect 30 major European cities in the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, and The Netherlands. This state-of-the-art, high capacity, bi-directional, self-healing network will be capable of supporting data services (i.e., ATM, IP, and frame relay), multimedia and e-commerce applications, and voice telephony.

The network will employ Lucent Technologies' TrueWave RS (for "reduced slope") non-zero dispersion shifted fiber-optic cable, which is capable of utilizing dense wave-division multiplexing (DWDM) technology with synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) transmission standards. It will also employ Nortel Network's state-of-the-art multi-wavelength optical repeaters for crisp, error-free electrical and optical amplification.
Headquartered in New York, Viatel is a facilities-based provider of telecommunications services. The company offers a broad array of competitively priced national and international long-distance services to small and medium-sized businesses as well as to individual consumers in more than 230 countries and territories worldwide. For more information on Viatel please consult its Web site www.viatel.com.

Bechtel is a global engineer-constructor with 100 years of experience and more than 30,000 employees. In 1997 Bechtel booked $12.2 billion in new work and worked off $11.3 billion in revenue. As of December 1997, Bechtel had more than 1000 active projects in 63 countries. Bechtel is headquartered in San Francisco, with more than 60 offices worldwide.
Bechtel's telecommunications group was formed in 1969 to support major Bechtel construction projects and has since grown into a full telecommunications engineering and construction services company capable of providing design, engineering applications, project management, and construction management for all types of telecommunications systems. Over the past 29 years, Bechtel Telecommunications has completed more than 80 projects and specializes in building telecommunications infrastructure for emerging carriers.