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Technology Stocks : e.spire Communications (ESPI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Marshall who wrote (143)	4/1/1999 10:31:00 AM
From: Hope	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 471

e.spireDATA Backs Performance With Aggressive Service Level Agreements Thursday April 1, 10:13 am Eastern Time Agreements Guarantee Network Service Availability, Latency, Delivery Rate, and Installation ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION, Md., April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Continuing with its strategy to provide differentiated Internet and data services to businesses, e.spireDATA, a unit of e.spire Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: ESPI - news) today announced it now guarantees its performance in key service categories. e.spire offers its business customers the ability to communicate with bandwidth-intensive applications over high-speed local fiber optic networks and a nationwide data backbone. The service level agreements (SLAs) will be included with long-term contracts for customers purchasing any of several local access and network backbone solutions, including asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), Frame Relay, and Internet protocol (IP) backbone access services. ''Our offer of data service level agreements indicates our confidence in the reliability of our services. We now back them with comprehensive performance guarantees, as aggressive as any offered by comparable service providers,'' said Dennis Kern, e.spire Chief Operating Officer and e.spireDATA President. ''By offering guarantees for our data services, we take our commitment to service quality a step further.'' The SLAs offer the following guarantees: * 99.95% availability to the e.spire Internet data backbone network; * median monthly latency of no more than 100 milliseconds roundtrip within e.spire's backbone within the United States; * delivery, or throughput rates of 99.5% for ATM cells, Frame Relay frames, and Internet packets within the e.spire data backbone network; and * service installation, or provisioning, by the quoted date. The SLAs are available immediately to U.S. companies that choose a contract term of one or more years. Each SLA includes a specific compensation schedule. Customers receive a credit of a day's service fee for each incident of downtime longer than 20 minutes and shorter than four hours, and two days' service fee for each incident extending past four hours. If e.spire does not meet the latency guarantee for two consecutive months, all Frame Relay, dedicated Internet access, and ATM customers are then eligible for a credit of a day's service fee. Customers may check monthly network performance statistics at their leisure, using any Internet browser. In addition, if e.spire doesn't install the necessary equipment and software by the promised date, customers will be eligible for a credit for half the installation service fee. e.spire is ''powering up'' its SLA launch by taking advantage of extensive local fiber optic networks, and a nationwide data and Tier-1 Internet backbone network equipped with Newbridge Mainstreet Xpress ATM switches and Cisco Internet routers in 48 markets. The combined infrastructure enables the company to offer its target market of small office/home office (SOHO) and small- to medium-sized businesses a suite of services previously only available to larger businesses. e.spireDATA, a business unit of e.spire Communications, provides high- speed data and Internet services, including dial-up, digital subscriber line (DSL) and dedicated Internet access, ATM, Frame Relay, messaging and e-commerce solutions, and Web hosting. e.spire Communications, Inc. is a leading provider of integrated communications solutions, including dedicated access, local dial tone, long distance, advanced data, Internet, and networking solutions, in markets throughout the United States. For more information on e.spire, contact www.espire.net on the Internet. SOURCE: e.spire Communications, Inc.