June 27,1996

CONTACT: Jamie DePeau 202-336-7825

NYNEX Officer Testifies Before House Subcomittee on Energy and Power

WASHINGTON, D.C. --- NYNEX Science and Technology President, Casimir S. Skrzypczak, today appeared before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and Power urging the speedy adoption of one-call legislation.

One-call legislation would require owners of underground facilities, like telephone cables, to provide information about where these facilities are located and anyone who excavates to provide notice of their intent to dig.

An alarming number of network outages are caused by fiber cable cuts. In fact, a recent study completed by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) concluded that over half of all facilities-based network outages were the result of fiber cable dig-ups, and 51% of these occurred because the excavator either failed to notify the facility owner or provided inadequate notification, stated Mr. Skrzypczak. One-call legislation will further improve the reliability of the communications in this country and should be adopted as quickly as possible.

Although forty-six of the fifty states have some form of one-call legislation, the rules and enforcement vary widely from state-to-state.

Where effective one-call legislation and one-call centers are in place, substantial improvement in the problem has occurred. Reductions of up to 50% in the number of fiber cable dig-ups have been reported in locations with active cable damage awareness/prevention programs. In contrast, 20% of the national total of dig-ups occur in Texas -- a state with no one-call legislation, commented Mr. Skrzypczak in his testimony.

Mr. Skrzypczak is responsible for the management of the NYNEX corporate research and development programs, including the operation of NYNEXs Science and Technology Center. He serves as the Chairman of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions and chaired the Network Reliability Steering Committee associated with Federal Communications Commissions Network Reliability Council.