UUNet Technologies to cut off free connections to its Internet backbone, Inter@ctive Week reports

Business Wire, April 25, 1997

GARDEN CITY, L.I.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 25, 1997--The days of free access to big Internet backbones may be about to end, Inter@ctive Week will report in its April 28 edition.

The Internet industry publication says UUNet Technologies Inc., one of the four largest providers of backbone service, has sent notices to 12 smaller Internet service providers that it no longer considers them to be its peers. The result: They will be no longer be able to exchange traffic for free, under what are normally called "peering" agreements between Internet service providers.

The move is seen as a power play designed to force smaller providers to pay for access - or possibly go out of business. One provider of Internet connections, Whole Earth Networks Inc., plans to fight the move before the California Public Utility Commission and, if necessary, the Federal Communications Commission.

"We intend to establish that nondiscriminatory interconnection between telecommunications carriers over the Internet is the law of the land," WholeEarth president David Holub said. Whole Earth is affiliated with the influential Internet community known as The WELL, or Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link.

But the impact on the smaller players could be significant. Among those confirming the UUNet action are Atlanta-based NetRail Inc. (www.netrail.net), which expects to lose its mutual access agreement with UUnet on May 23, and Redwood City, Calif.-based GeoNet Communications Inc. (www.global.net), which says its UUnet peering agreement will be cut off in June.

If they are cut off, their customers would lose access to sites hosted on the Net through UUnet and would not be able to receive requests from UUnet customers. That would lead to a "break" in the universal access of sites on the World Wide Web, one of its most attractive characteristics.

UUNet appears to be shutting down one other key avenue of free access to its backbone. The Commercial Internet Exchange said Friday that Uunet and Sprint Communications Co. LP plan to cease connecting their backbones to CIX. CIX would have been the last no-fee access to the Uunet backbones for a number of Internet service providers.

For more information, contact Inter@ctive Week senior writer Peter Lambert at 303-722-4246; or Inter@ctive Week editor-in-chief Tom Steinert-Threlkeld at 972-293-7887.

Inter@ctive Week, based in Garden City, N.Y., is the Internet's newspaper, circulating to 100,000 industry leaders every week.

CONTACT: Inter@ctive Week

Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

Editor-In-Chief

972/293-7887