D&E Communications Provides High-Speed Network for Lancaster General Hospital.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

EPHRATA, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 3, 2003

D&E Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:DECC) has created a high-speed network that enables Lancaster General Hospital to rapidly transmit information, including medical images, between its affiliated sites.

The Metropolitan Area Network interconnects Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster General Health Campus, Lancaster General Women & Babies Hospital and Kissel Hill Health Center. The network also links each of the health facilities to a new off-site data center, which serves more than 60 Lancaster General facilities and entities throughout Lancaster County.

The network is engineered for reliability, with back-up circuits to help ensure the hospitals' ability to transmit critical medical images and information, even if the primary connection were temporarily out of service. The network is monitored by D&E staff around-the-clock at D&E's Network Operations Center.

"We understand that data communication is critical to the operation of Lancaster General Hospital and its affiliates. The high-speed network we've created has the most up-to-date reliability features to support Lancaster General's medical and business operations," said G. William Ruhl, Chief Executive Officer of D&E. "We have been providing telecommunication services to Lancaster General for three years, and we are pleased that the hospital decided to expand this relationship by selecting D&E to provide a Metropolitan Area Network and space for a data center."

Service for the hospital is provided via an advanced high-capacity fiber-optic data network that D&E has installed to serve customers in the Lancaster area. A key component of the service is Coriolis Networks' OptiFlow multi-service provisioning platform, which delivers gigabit Ethernet and 10/100BaseT Ethernet connections to the various sites. The platform automatically allocates bandwidth, without requiring staff involvement. This allows the network to efficiently allocate the "burst" bandwidth needed when large files such as MRIs are transmitted. When a circuit is not using its burst capacity, the bandwidth is immediately available for another circuit's use on the same network. This technology can accommodate growing data needs without additional wiring.

About Lancaster General

Lancaster General is a non-profit system of more than two dozen healthcare providers including Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster General Health Campus, Lancaster General Women & Babies Hospital and Lancaster General Medical Group. A Magnet hospital for clinical excellence, Lancaster General Hospital is the keystone of the health system, located in south central Pennsylvania. Its mission is to advance the health and quality of life of the individuals and communities it serves by providing superior healthcare that demonstrates community benefit. For more information, visit www.LancasterGeneral.org.

About D&E Communications, Inc.

D&E provides telecommunication services to more than 175,000 lines in central and eastern Pennsylvania. Founded in 1911 and based in Lancaster County, D&E is the nation's 19th-largest independent telephone company and also offers long distance, Internet and voice and data network systems integration services. The Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania named D&E as its 2002 Technology Company of the Year, and the Central Penn Business Journal recently ranked it as the region's second-fastest-growing company. For more information, visit www.decommunications.com.

This press release may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of D&E's management concerning the development of our business, are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that could cause actual developments and results to differ materially from our expectations. These include factors that we have indicated could adversely affect our business and financial performance contained in our past and future filings and reports, including those filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. D&E undertakes no obligation to revise or update its forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.