NYNEX Announces Plans to Provide Intranet/Extranet Solutions for Financial Services Industry

June 24, 1997

CONTACT:
NYNEX -- John Bonomo, 212 395-0500 john_bonomo@SMTP.NYNEX.com
or
ANS Communications -- Chris Carleton, 617 235-2422 ccarleton@chenpr.com
or
Sun Microsystems -- Steve Foley, 212 614-5036 steve_foley@bm.com
or
Avesta Technologies -- Tom Crahen, 212 285-1500 tcrahen@avestatech.com

NYNEX Announces Plans to Provide Intranet/Extranet Solutions
for Financial Services Industry

Partners With ANS, Sun Microsystems and Avesta Technologies To Introduce Total
IP Solutions

NEW YORK -- NYNEX today announced plans to provide intranet/extranet services
for the financial services industry together with three technology partners that
will support development of its initial offerings.

The NYNEX strategy was introduced at a special customer briefing at the opening
of the Securities Industry Association's Information Management Conference &
Exhibit in Manhattan, a key trade event for the global financial services industry.

"With this announcement, NYNEX is expanding its portfolio of services
to address all of its customers' networking needs, from access and transport to value-added
capabilities," said Rangnath Salgame, president of NYNEX Internetworking and
Multimedia Solutions. "This is one more significant step in our strategy to
offer total business networking services to one of our most demanding and important
customer groups, the financial community.

"We will support total IP solutions, including global, integrated valued-added
information services for the financial community. Our customers will be able to use
these solutions for two environments: within their businesses, providing companies
with secure, private intranets on a local or global scale with service-level guarantees;
or with 'extranets,' extended intranets built around business-to-business communities
of interest."

To develop and market its services, NYNEX has formed strategic partnerships
with three companies -- ANS Communications, Sun Microsystems and Avesta Technologies.
Each will play a critical role in developing the integrated delivery platform for
the services, Salgame said. "Each of our partners possesses core competencies
and resources that will complement NYNEX's plans for the services," he said.

ANS Communications, Inc., the Elmsford, NY-based subsidiary of America Online,
Inc., will team with NYNEX in the areas of global IP transport, managed network and
remote access services. Bruce Bond, president and CEO of ANS, said: "ANS is
pleased to partner with NYNEX to deliver managed IP services and proactive customer
care. ANS will benefit through this partnership because of NYNEX's high-quality local
infrastructure and its expertise in the most communications and information intensive
markets in the world."

Said Salgame: "NYNEX will benefit from ANS's extensive TCP/IP expertise,
its long heritage of internetworking experience, its state-of-the-art network operations
center, and its secure international TCP/IP backbone network." Sun Microsystems
Inc., of Mountain View, CA., will provide expertise to introduce and sustain enterprise
applications based on its Java technology. Rob Hall, Sun's vice president of worldwide
financial services market development, said:

"Sun has enjoyed a long relationship as a key strategic technology vendor
to NYNEX. Today's announcement recognizes Java as they key enabling technology for
establishing network-based industry services."

Avesta Technologies is a New York City-based high technology software developer,
specializing in event-driven information systems which use "push" and Java
technologies to meet the needs of industries such as financial services. "The
financial services industry has historically been on the leading edge of technology
innovation and has a strong track record of industry collaboration," said Kam
Saifi, Avesta Technologies president and CEO. "In developing the first closed-user
group extranet for the financial industry, this partnership is responding to pent-up
demand for shared network delivered solutions."

Said Salgame: "End users within the financial industry are demanding
more packaged intranet solutions to better communicate with information providers,
business partners and customers. This need is driving the demand for secure, manageable
high-performance services." Trials of the NYNEX services will begin within the
next few months with selected financial services industry leaders, he said. Initial
planned service offerings comprise three categories: intranet/extranet consultation,
internetworking solutions, and information services and applications.

NYNEX is a global communications and media corporation that provides a full
range of services in the northeastern United States and high-growth markets around
the world, including the United Kingdom, Thailand, Gibraltar, Greece, Indonesia,
the Philippines, Poland, and the Czech and Slovak republics. The corporation is a
leader in telecommunications, wireless communications, directory publishing and video
entertainment and information services. NYNEX is also managing sponsor of FLAG --
Fiberoptic Link Around the Globe -- the world's longest undersea fiber optic communications
cable.

NYNEX news releases are available on the Internet at http://www.ba.com/nr/pastnews.html
or via fax for no charge at 1-800-331-1214.