Tulsa's WilTel Communications LLC is providing National LambdaRail Inc. (NLR) with services to help complete its nationwide fiber optic network infrastructure. NLR, a constortium of leading U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies, is constructing the network to provide the research commmunity with direct control over a wide range of network facilities, capabilities and services.

NLR's services will support both application-level and networking-level experiments and will serve diverse communities of computational scientists, distributed systems researchers and networking researchers.

"Now more than ever before, reasearch institutions and universities can take advantage of networking technologies that enable them to collaborate nationwide on key initiatives," said Tony Tomae, WilTEl's senior vice president of marketing. "Customer continue to rely on WilTEl to power these new initiatives because of our experience in managing network applications for the world's largest telecommunications carriers and enterprises."

According to Tom West, chief executive officer of National LambdaRail Inc., WilTel is providing an important component of NLR's nationwide network infrastructure.

"WilTel is helping NLR cost-effectively meet a range of needs, from dedicated experimental capabilities for network researchers, to shared production networks for groups of scientists with major research projects," said West.

NLR is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. NLR puts the control, power and promise of experimental network infrastructure in the hands of our nation's scientists and researchers.

WilTel Communications LLC provides a diverse set of data, voice, IP, video, managed and professional services, creating advanced network solutions for customers including global telecommunications providers, Fortune 2000 enterprises, media and entertainment companies, and the federal government. WilTel Communications LLC is the operating subsidiary of WilTel Communications Group Inc., a wholly owned, indirect subsidiary of Leucadia National Corporation.