Williams Communications Gains Customers in Tulsa, Okla., Area.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News December 8, 2001 By D.R. Stewart, Tulsa World, Okla. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News Dec. 8–Bankruptcies of several competing telecommunications companies is not bad news to Williams Communications Group Inc., says Howard Janzen, its president and chief executive.

Speaking Friday at Williams Communications’ inaugural Broadband University, a two-day telecommunications forum at the company’s Technology Center downtown, Janzen said the stock market downturn and the implosion of the high-tech sector actually have improved prospects for companies like Williams Communications, which operates a lit and operating 33,000-mile nationwide fiber-optic network.

“Nobody is spending money on bandwidth today,” Janzen said.

As telecom analysts and media commentators worried about a bandwidth glut supposedly produced by fiber-optic network operators and their investment banks this year, Williams Communications executives stuck to their business plan, Janzen said. here too much fiber

As its stock price plummeted from around $40 to Friday’s closing price of $2.39, up 12 cents a share, the company focused on technological leadership and operational excellence that eventually would drive financial performance, he said.

“We are doing it, we are accomplishing a phenomenal level of performance. We are winning customers,” Janzen said. “Boeing, WorldCom, KDDI — read our customer list. It’s literally a who’s who in industry.” Janzen said those who follow only the company’s bottom line, which has featured major net losses in recent quarters, are missing the underlying story: Revenues continue to grow with a growing customer base, and the company continues to whittle away at its $5 billion-plus long-term debt — debt the company incurred building its network. in our site too much fiber

“Last quarter, our recurring network revenue grew 7 percent quarter over quarter,” Janzen said. “Our competitors’ revenue declined 7 percent.

“We set a goal of being EBITDA-positive by the end of the year. We are on track to make that happen.” EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — is considered a more accurate yardstick to measure performance of construction-heavy telecommunications companies because it gauges the company’s ability to reduce debt.

With the network in place and the company attracting large bandwidth customers such as SBC Communications Inc., the parent of Southwestern Bell, Williams Communications will be able to drive down the price for bandwidth more than its competitors or new entrants, Janzen said.

“Many of those players have no business buying dark fiber with all the capital issues that are required to light it up,” Janzen said. “It’s much better, like SBC, to take a network that’s already built, like ours, with the expertise to light, maintain, build and run it.” Russ McGuire, an industry consultant at TeleChoice, said buying and installing the equipment to make dark fiber operational costs up to 10 times as much as putting it in the ground.

“There isn’t too much fiber in the ground when you consider that fiber lasts 20 years.” WCG, BA, WCOM,