Williams Communications Announces New Business Unit Segment to Align for New Opportunities in Emerging Broadband Business Markets - Company Operations

Cambridge Telcom Report, May 1, 2000

Williams Communications (NYSE: WCG) will realign its operating segments into four segments: Network, Solutions, Strategic Investments and a new fourth segment of Broadband Media. This action is in recognition of emerging lines of business that are rapidly becoming new areas of opportunity for the company.

Earlier this month, Williams Communications announced that its Williams Vyvx Services group would team with other providers in a new Broadband Media services model that will offer customers complete management and distribution of their digital assets and associated information. Previously, Vyvx results were reported as a part of the company's Strategic Investments business segment.

The new Broadband Media service is to be built on IBM's newly announced Content Manager media asset management solution, Web enabled by Ad VISUAL , and the Vyvx MediaXtranet, a network, hosting and navigation system that will facilitate the movement of content for business-to- business media applications.

The companies' collaboration is intended to give customers an integrated, full-service solution that will increase efficiencies in the creation, management, hosting and distribution of digital information.

The increasing popularity of the Internet and of the Williams Multi-Service Broadband Network as delivery mechanisms have resulted in the proliferation of rich media assets -- digitized photographs, videotapes, music, film and accompanying data.

Long-term, effective management and re-purposing of digital content will be critical to the overall growth of multimedia businesses. Targeted markets include advertising, post production, entertainment, broadcasting, health care and distance learning.

The Network unit will continue to include results from operations of the company's expanding fiber-optic network. It also has been expanded to include results from various investments in network-related companies that previously were managed in Strategic Investments. Similarly results from the company's interest in PowerTel Limited, a publicly traded company that is building and operating a fiber-optic network in Australia, have been re-aligned into the Network business unit segment from Strategic Investments.

Williams Communications Solutions, the largest independent provider of advanced, integrated solutions for business customers in North America, now will include results from Intersys, a data systems integration and professional development company in Mexico. Intersys also previously had been a part of Strategic Investments.

Strategic Investments will continue to include certain domestic and international results such as Algar Telecom Leste S.A. (ATL).

Williams Communications is North America's only exclusively carrier-focused fiber-optic network and the largest independent source of end-to-end integrated business communications solutions -- data, voice or video. Based in Tulsa, Okla., Williams Communications has more than 9,000 employees primarily in North America, with offices in Europe and Asia and investments in South America and Australia. Approximately 85 percent of WCG stock is held by Williams (NYSE: WMB) which, in 1985, became the first energy company to harness its core competency as a builder of networks to enable competition in the communications industry. Additional information is available at www.williams.com and www.williamscommunications.com.