Qwest to carry part of new Internet
To hel¥speed development of the Next Generation Internet (NGI), Qwest Communications (Denver, CO) is making available more than 16,000 miles of fiberoptic network with a market value of more than $500 million. Cisco Systems (San Jose, CA) and Northern Telecom (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) will provide hardware for the network, called Abilene, which should begin operating this year and be finished by the end of 1999. The NGI is a federal-government initiative to develo¥a network u¥to 1000 times faster than the current Internet. It includes the Internet 2 project, a consortium of 122 universities (see Laser Focus World, May 1998, p. 95).