Just a month after the gas distribution and communications holding company Williams Companies Inc announced that it was getting back into selling wholesale communications capacity on its 11,000 mile US fiber network, and building more network, it has now upped its projected investment from $1bn to $2.7bn. The company sold all but one fiber pair of its original 11,000 mile network to WorldCom Inc in 1995, and signed a non-competition agreement. It did not sell wholesale telecoms services until this agreement expired at the start of the year. Now, the company is planning to build a 32,000 mile network by the year 2001. The Williams board has committed to investing $800m by the end of the year, and will have doubled the length by the end of 1999, with the network fully built out to 32,000 miles by the end of 2001. The expansion was partly decided after it signed agreements with US West Communications Inc, and Intermedia Communications Inc, for both companies to use its network (CI No 3,338). With all the companies laying fiber, the internet backbone is unlikely to run out of bandwidth, as there are now four big independent fiber network builders in the US: Williams, IXC Communications Inc, Qwest Communications Inc, and Level 3 Communications Inc, all of whom are building blisteringly fast trans-continental communications networks.
