Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association Expands Services Offered Under Broadwing Contract

New Products and Services Offered to Member Plans Across the United States

HostReview.com
Thursday, March 18, 2004; 12:00 AM

AUSTIN, Texas (March 18, 2004) – Broadwing Communications, a consolidated subsidiary of Corvis Corporation (NASDAQ: CORV), today announced that the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association has expanded the offered products and services under its contract with Broadwing as a national partner for its Member Plans.

“The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association has been pleased with Broadwing’s performance as one of our national telecommunications partners. Broadwing’s ability to provision services quickly and focus on customer service has led to more Member Plans signing on with them. In addition, Broadwing has been very responsive to Plans’ needs by expanding their product offerings,” said Mike Ozmeral, managing director, business development, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

In 2002, Broadwing announced that it would be offering its data and voice services to each of Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s 41 independent Member Plans across the United States. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is comprised of 41 independent, locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans that collectively provide healthcare coverage for more than 88.3 million – nearly one-in-three – Americans.

Today, Broadwing announced it is expanding its line of products and services offered for Blue Cross Blue Shield Member Plans, particularly in the area of business continuity and disaster recovery. Specifically, Broadwing’s previously announced MultiConnect ReDirect product, a disaster recovery tool, is now available to participating Member Plans. MultiConnect ReDirect allows Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans to cost-effectively add a secondary, backup host location to a Plan’s hub-and-spoke MultiConnect network. In the event a Plan needs to activate its disaster recovery plan, authorized company officials notify Broadwing’s Enterprise Management Center, and a Broadwing technician switches the host connection from the primary to the secondary location.

Broadwing has also added MultiConnect Express to the variety of data and voice products offered for Blue Cross Blue Shield member plans. MultiConnect Express is a flat-rate, protocol-agnostic, point-to-multipoint private line solution which allows customers to fan private lines from a single OC-48, OC-12 or OC-3 host.

“The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s Member Plans are one of our fastest growing groups of enterprise customers,” said Richard Putt, president of national accounts at Broadwing. “We are pleased that we have been able to expand our relationship and grow our business with them over the last sixteen months and we look forward to continuing to provide the Member Plans with outstanding customer service, expanded geographic coverage and enhanced products.”