Qwest Communications Upgrades U.S. Department of Energy's Research Communications Network

Released on = November 3, 2004, 9:29 am

Press Release Author = Qwest Communications International Inc.

Industry = Telecomunications

Press Release Summary = Qwest Communications Upgrades U.S. Department of Energy's Research Communications Network

Seven-Year Contract Advances Networking and Communications Support to National Scientific Research Community

Press Release Body = DENVER, October 26, 2004 — Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE: Q) today announced an extended contract for network connectivity with the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) for its Energy Sciences Network (ESnet). Qwest’s continued work on ESnet is part of a seven-year contract, which began in 1999 with a contract value of $50 million and has since grown to a potential value of up to $87.5 million.

Under the contract, Qwest increased ESnet’s bandwidth by providing an OC-48 (2.56 Gbps) local access connection to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, and to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Funded primarily by the DOE Office of Science, ESnet is managed by the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. ESnet operates a backbone network connecting more than 35 DOE research sites.

“Scientists around the world are increasingly dependent on reliable, high-bandwidth connections, whether they are using network resources to collaborate or are participating in experiments yielding terabytes of data,” said William Johnston, ESnet manager at Berkeley Lab. “This upgraded bandwidth, along with our proven reliability, is critical to advancing scientific research within the Department of Energy community and with its university and international research and education collaborations.”

The upgrades enable scientists to take better advantage of the 2.5G/10G ESnet backbone. ESnet currently has a six-node optical fiber backbone network, much of which was upgraded in 2003 to 10 Gigabits per second through Qwest’s Qwave services, a suite of fully managed, all-optical, high-capacity private line services. Qwest also is providing local access to the Oak Ridge facility.

Qwest continues to meet the Department of Energy’s increasing bandwidth needs, which have doubled each year since the inception of ESnet in 1985.

“Qwest is investing in infrastructure and technology to be able to provide a full range of multi-gigabit services to these and other federal facilities where reliable and robust services are required,” said James F.X. Payne, senior vice president of Qwest’s government services division.

About Qwest

Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE: Q) is a leading provider of voice, video and data services. With more than 40,000 employees, Qwest is committed to the “Spirit of Service” and providing world-class services that exceed customers’ expectations for quality, value and reliability. For more information, please visit the Qwest Web site at www.qwest.com.

About ESnet

The ESnet project mission is to help accelerate the pace of progress for the broad scientific research activities within the DOE by providing advanced communications and networking support to the research community. The project focus is to provide high performance and leading-edge capabilities on a cost effective and reliable basis. Because of the broad range of research activities within the DOE, a diverse range of capabilities is required of ESnet, including very high end-to-end performance levels, global interconnectivity, remote access to very costly experimental facilities, state-of-the-art collaboration tools and support, and high reliability and availability. Additional information is available at www.es.net and http://www.sc.doe.gov/ascr/mics/esnet/index.html.

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Amy Dietrich
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