IIJ Purchases Additional Crosswave
Shares in the form of ADRs
TOKYO, December 27, 2000 - Internet Initiative Japan Inc. ("IIJ",NASDAQ: IIJI) today announced that it has purchased an additional
3.0 million outstanding American Depositary Receipts ("ADRs") of its
affiliate, Crosswave Communications Inc. ("Crosswave", NASDAQ:CWCI) at fair market value in a privately negotiated transaction. The
3.0 million ADRs are equivalent to 15,000 shares of Crosswave's
common stock. This purchase followed the purchase of 15,000 newshares of Crosswave's common stock at the time of Crosswave's IPO
in August 2000. As a result of this purchase, IIJ's ownership inCrosswave has increased from approximately 34.9% toapproximately 37.9%.
IIJ believes that Crosswave is an integral part of its ongoing goal ofproviding superior and comprehensive Internet solutions to its
customers. This purchase is also an important demonstration of IIJ'sconfidence in the value of Crosswave to the telecommunications
market in Japan. "Crosswave is Japan's sole national carrier thatsuccessfully realized a new generation nationwide network
especially optimized for data communications with DWDM andSONET technologies. By leveraging Crosswave's unique position in
the market, we can take advantage of the group synergies under
our total solutions strategy, and position ourselves to capture a
portion of the growing demand in the market as we move toward
the broadband era," said Koichi Suzuki, President and CEO of IIJ.
"The current stock price of Crosswave presented us with anopportunity to increase our ownership interest in Crosswave at a
price which we view as attractive."
About IIJInternet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ, NASDAQ: IIJI) is Japan's leading
Internet-access and comprehensive Internet solution provider
mainly targeting high-end corporate customers. Founded in 1992 asa pioneer of commercial Internet services in Japan, IIJ has built oneof the largest Internet backbone networks in Japan as well as one of
the largest between Japan and the United States. IIJ and its group

companies provide total solutions including: systems integration,
new generation network services over optical-fiber infrastructure
optimized for data communications, high-quality Internet access,network security, server hosting/housing and content design.
The statements within this release may contain forward-looking statements thatinvolve risk and uncertainties. These statements may differ materially from actual
future events or results. Readers are referred to the documents filed by Internet
Initiative Japan Inc. with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Forms 20F or 6-K, which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results todiffer from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Important risks andfactors that could cause our actual results to be materially different from ourexpectations include, without limitation: that our large capital investment inCrosswave Communications Inc. may not yield the expected returns in the future orat all, that we may not continue to increase subscribers to our connectivity services,that we may not generate significant revenues from our systems integration
services, and that leased line costs may not decrease as rapidly as expected or atall.