National Science Foundation and Russian Ministry of Industry, Science and
       Technology Fund New High Speed Network For Scientific Collaboration

RESTON, VA, and MOSCOW, Russia,Dec. 17 2001 --NCSA and the Kurchatov
Institute, top research institutions in the U.S. and Russia respectively,
today announced they have selected Teleglobe (NYSE, TSE: BCE), the e-World
Communications Company, to develop a 155 megabit per second (Mbps) high
performance network connection that will give the two countries' scientific
communities unprecedented access to each other and facilitate joint scientific
and educational projects.
    The link, called FASTnet (For Advanced Science and Technology Network),
is funded in part by a $2 million grant from the U.S. National Science
Foundation (NSF) to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Russian support for the
link is from the Russian Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology. FASTnet
supports a strong alliance between NCSA, the Russian Research Center
"Kurchatov Institute" in Moscow, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Moscow-
based Joint Supercomputer Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences and
Teleglobe.
    The new FASTnet network will increase the bandwidth between the U.S. and
Russia by orders of magnitude. FASTnet will facilitate communications through
high quality video-conferencing that has never been possible on such a wide
basis between the U.S. and Russian scientific communities. The network's
capabilities will be put to use during the U.S.-Russian Science and Technology
Dialog series of science and technology working groups in nine different
scientific disciplines, scheduled to begin next month. Following these
dialogs, the discussions will expand to a broader range of topics and
disciplines.
    "FASTnet represents a new level of communication infrastructure between
the U.S. and Russia and it introduces new possibilities for collaboration and
cooperative work," said Dan Reed, director of NCSA and the National
Computational Science Alliance. "The primary purpose of this network
infrastructure is to enable scientists in both countries to explore new
research opportunities in a variety of disciplines."
    Among those are joint responses to natural and man-made disasters,
safeguards of nuclear material, better understanding of the human genome,
joint exploration of space, distributed monitoring of seismic events, high
energy physics collaborations and atmospheric and other environmental studies
and simulations.
    "Research collaborations with Russia are important to the U.S. science
and engineering community," said Aubrey Bush, director of the NSF Division for
Advanced Networking and Research. "The FASTnet team of Greg Cole and Natasha
Bulashova have done an excellent job of building the international
partnerships that are making this advanced network a significant resource in
both our countries."
    "Teleglobe has been an active participant in experiments involving the
United States, Canadian, European and Asian research networks since 1994, when
we first demonstrated transatlantic connectivity between the Canadian national
research and education network and a meeting of telecommunications ministers
in Belgium," said Teleglobe's Vice President of Data and Internet Greg Ewert.
"We are honored to have a role in advancing scientific and educational
communications between the United States and Russia."
    FASTnet represents one of approximately 20 programs and activities
proposed by NCSA and the Kurchatov Institute that will bring together the U.S.
and Russian scientific and education communities through advanced information
infrastructures or grids. A grid links research teams or individuals to each
other and a vast array of online resources, including computing systems,
advanced applications, scientific instruments, visualization systems and
multimedia services.
    By connecting Russia to the U.S. through the Chicago-based StarLight
optical access point, for connectivity to other research and education
networks, the FASTnet network will provide Russian scientists, educators and
students direct connectivity to the common interconnection point for global
research and education networks. The connectivity enables both collaboration
and the development of new Internet technology including wavelength switching
and other grid networks. These North American research and education networks
include Abilene, vBNS, CANARIE and ESnet.
    FASTnet will serve as the networking foundation for two Russian grid
projects planned jointly by NCSA and the Kurchatov Institute: Nauka-Grid,
which will connect Russian scientific organizations across the country and
link them to online resources; and CIV-Grid, a similar project that aims to
link civilians. For more information, visit www.friends-partners.org/fastnet
for the U.S. site or www.friends-partners.ru for the Russian site.

    THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF) is an independent federal agency
that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science
and engineering, with an annual budget of about $4.5 billion. NSF funds reach
all 50 states, through grants to about 1,800 universities and institutions
nationwide. Each year, NSF receives about 30,000 competitive requests for
funding and makes about 10,000 new funding awards. For more information, visit
www.nsf.gov

    THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR SUPERCOMPUTING APPLICATIONS (NCSA) at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a leader in developing and
deploying cutting-edge high-performance computing, networking and information
technologies. NCSA is a partner in the TeraGrid project, a National Science
Foundation initiative to build and deploy the world's largest, fastest, most
comprehensive, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research. NCSA
also leads the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance), a
partnership to prototype an advanced computational infrastructure for the 21st
century that includes more than 50 academic, government and industry research
partners. The NSF Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(PACI) program funds the Alliance. In addition to the NSF, NCSA receives
support from the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, private sector
partners and other federal agencies. For more information, visit
www.ncsa.uiuc.edu

    THE RUSSIAN RESEARCH CENTER "KURCHATOV INSTITUTE" is a nationwide complex
of research facilities based in Moscow. It is the country's first national
research center and was established in 1991 by decree of the president of
Russia. The Kurchatov Institute replaces the former I. V. Kurchatov Institute
of Atomic Energy and now is under direct authority of the Russian government,
reporting directly to Russia's prime minister. The Institute has played a
leading role in the development of the Russian Internet and continues to lead
development of scientific and academic networking across Russia, supporting
specific goals of increased United States and Russian scientific cooperation
and the advancement of communications and infrastructure to support it.
Dr. Evgeny Velikhov, president of the Institute, is known for his research in
plasma physics and controlled thermonuclear fusion. He has served as a top
science adviser to all Soviet/Russian presidents since Leonid Brezhnev and
continues this role today. Dr. Velikhov has been active for many years in
various initiatives with Russian youth. He introduced Junior Achievement into
Russia and will this year see the education of its two millionth child in the
principles and practices of business management and the free market economy.
For more information, visit www.kiae.ru and http://www.ja-russia.ru/.

    THE JOINT SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER was established in 1999 as the primary
computational sciences facility of the Russian Academy of Science. For more
information, visit www.jscc.ru.

    TELEGLOBE, a leading provider of global communications and eBusiness
services, enables its customers to maximize the potential of the Internet
through delivery of hosting services, content distribution and global
connectivity. With a lit capacity of 10 million+ Gbps-miles, 149 POPs and
approximately 300,000 square feet of hosting facilities (year-end 2001),
Teleglobe is one of the world's largest international Internet backbones
serving a broad base of enterprise, Internet content provider (ICP), Internet
service provider (ISP), application service provider (ASP) and carrier
customers. Teleglobe is expanding its network with its GlobeSystem initiative,
a multi-billion dollar IP network and hosting deployment. For more
information, visit www.teleglobe.com .

    This release contains information about management's view of Teleglobe's
future expectations, plans and prospects that constitute forward looking
statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially
from those indicated by these forward-looking statements, as a result of a
variety of factors including, but not limited to, competitive developments,
risks associated with Teleglobe's growth, the development of the Internet
market, regulatory risks and other factors that are discussed in Teleglobe's
Annual Information Form and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.




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For further information: Media Contacts: David L. Thompson, Teleglobe,
(703) 755-2950, david.thompson@teleglobe.com; Tom Garritano, National
Science Foundation, (703) 292-8070, tgarrita@nsf.gov; Karen Green, National
Center for Supercomputer Applications, (217) 265-0748, (217) 265-0749,
kareng@ncsa.uiuc.edu