MCI Recognized as Most Connected Internet Network Provider

MCI (www.mci.com) announced that its global IP network has been recognized for the fourth consecutive year as the world's most connected Internet backbone network.

"Our number one ranking illustrates MCI's role in delivering critical Internet services for our customers and the entire Internet community," said Vint Cerf, MCI senior vice president of Technology Strategy.

TeleGeography, a research division of PriMetrica, Inc., in its annual 2005 Global Internet Geography Database and Report, found that MCI's global network continues to serve the Internet with the greatest number of Autonomous System (AS) network connections of any IP network by more than 50 percent, playing a critical role in the movement of Internet traffic.

MCI, the company that pioneered the commercial Internet in 1987 as UUNET, has an IP network that spans six continents and supports more than two million global dial modems. MCI's Internet backbone provides more than 4,500 IP PoPs throughout North America, Latin America, UK-Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

MCI also played an integral role building a trans-Pacific submarine cable named Southern Cross that opened up direct Internet traffic routes from California to Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in 2000. The company continues to be at the forefront developing and implementing leading-edge networking technologies that move the Internet forward.

Just this year, MCI was the first data communications company to deploy an Ultra Long Haul Network; first to field test 40G over both a short haul and long haul network; first to announce a Converged Packet Access Strategy; and first to deploy the industry's latest state-of-the-art fiber, Medium Dispersion Fiber. MCI is also transitioning all its voice and data networks to an all IP core.