Ascend Communications Inc says that WorldCom Inc’s UUNet Technologies Inc unit has signed to buy slightly more than 170,000 Max TNT WAN access switches by the end of the year. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed. The new deployment will take UUNet’s total dial network capacity to 370,000 dial access ports. In addition, UUNet has decided to deploy Ascend’s GRF IP switch in its network and pledged its future loyalty as a customer of Ascend’s switches, routers and WAN access equipment. Ascend shares rose on the news pre-opening activity to 37-5/8 from a close of 36-9/16 on Wednesday.