January 17, 2001 -- Stratecast Partners' research and analysis concludes that Electric Lightwave has seen a steep decline over the past 9-12 months due to a variety of important company-specific factors as well as overall market conditions.

"The recent sector shakeout has affected companies large and small to varying degrees, including e.spire, ICG, Winstar, XO Communications, Level 3, Williams Communications Group and Electric Lightwave Inc.," says Lizet Tirres, research analyst, Stratecast Partners. "With the vast majority of emerging service providers trading near their 52-week lows as of late December 2000, and with many facing increasingly pressing funding crunches, the quarters to come will literally determine who survives and who must surrender," continues Tirres.

It is during times such as this that it becomes important and also challenging to determine how much of a company's decline is attributable to overall market trends and how much is attributable to company-specific issues and/or activities. Stratecast Partners assesses in its reports on emerging service providers a number of factors that will determine the survivability of these companies in the months to come.