WilTel Introduces Portfolio of Storage Extension Solutions for Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity; Enables Lava Trading To Cost Effectively Backup Confidential Client Transactions

Business Wire, June 6, 2005

CHICAGO -- WilTel Communications introduced today a portfolio of wide-area storage extension solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR), offering businesses such as Lava Trading, a leading technology firm in the financial services industry, an economical and flexible way to extend storage area networks over Ethernet.

Delivering on its expertise in wide-area networking, the portfolio of managed WAN services is anchored by WilTel's award-winning StorageXtend(SM), the industry's first storage over SONET solution offered in scalable, right-sized, 50 Mbps bandwidth increments. WilTel's storage extension offering has been expanded to include high-end optical solutions, as well as flexible Ethernet and IP services, specifically tailored to meet enterprises' needs for data retention, backup/recovery, storage consolidation, and regulatory compliance.

"WilTel's StorageXtend solution and expanded portfolio of storage extension services will enable businesses to implement affordable, yet sophisticated BC/DR configurations, previously only found in Fortune 500 corporations," said Stephanie Balaouras, senior analyst -- Enterprise Computing and Networking for Yankee Group.

The portfolio's Ethernet solution enables Lava Trading, an innovative provider of equities and foreign exchange trading solutions, to securely backup sensitive data. Lava is using WilTel's Managed Ethernet WAN (EWAN) services to replicate financial transaction records among geographically disperse data centers. After working with Lava to understand their BC/DR needs, WilTel engineered a wide-area Ethernet solution that best suited their needs for scalability, reliability and cost.

"There is a growing need for wide-area storage extension services because loss of important data has a devastating impact on enterprises and consumers," said Tony Tomae, senior vice president of marketing for WilTel. "WilTel developed this portfolio to meet the unique network performance needs of enterprises performing remote data storage, backup and recovery. We first work with our customers to understand their information management applications and then recommend the most economical and flexible network solution to meet current demands and support their future growth."

WilTel developed a 19-point model that analyzes the storage-specific networking criteria required for IT professionals to evaluate the tradeoffs among wide-area storage extension methods. By using this consultative approach, WilTel enables companies to select the most appropriate network-based business continuity and disaster recovery solution. WilTel's offering provides high-end, dedicated optical solutions, as well as SONET, Ethernet and IP to meet the connectivity needs of any enterprise from small office/home office (SoHo) and branch locations to large corporate data centers.

WilTel's StorageXtend won the 2005 SUPERQuest Award for Best Outsourced and Managed Service. Both StorageXtend and Managed EWAN were also named Communications Solutions' Products of the Year for improving both the customer experience and the ROI for the companies that use them.

About WilTel Communications

WilTel Communications, LLC, provides a diverse set of data, voice, IP, video, managed and professional services, creating advanced wide-area networking solutions for enterprise, global telecommunications providers, the federal government and media and entertainment companies. WilTel's next-generation network infrastructure reaches border-to-border and coast-to-coast with international connectivity to accommodate global traffic. WilTel Communications, LLC is the operating subsidiary of WilTel Communications Group, Inc., a wholly owned, indirect subsidiary of Leucadia National Corporation. For more detailed information, visit www.wiltel.com.

This press release may contain "forward-looking statements." Although WilTel believes any such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there is no assurance that actual outcomes will not be materially different. WilTel assumes no obligation to update those statements to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions and other factors. The forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Additional information that could lead to material changes in performance is contained in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission made by Leucadia.