Expanets Provides Saint Mary's College Advanced Communications System for Students, Faculty and Staff.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 2003

Expanets, the nation's leading provider of converged communications solutions to the mid-market, today announced that it has provided Saint Mary's College, a leader in the education of women for more than 150 years, located in Notre Dame, Indiana, with a converged communication solution that is contributing to its "collaboratory" environment designed to help students, faculty and staff communicate more efficiently.

Saint Mary's dedication to top quality education is recognized year over year in the U.S. News and World Report's annual survey of American colleges and universities in which it consistently receives the top ranking in its category. As an established and respected educational institution, Saint Mary's recognizes that part of maintaining its elite status is providing advanced and reliable communications tools for its constituents. As such, Saint Mary's has created a "collaboratory," which is an infrastructure that enables students, faculty, staff and alumnae to communicate and collaborate more safely, effectively and efficiently, and explore new avenues of teaching, learning and relationship building.

To create this environment Saint Mary's needed an advanced communications solution that offered affordable, feature rich, efficient, and future-ready systems. The college chose Expanets as its solutions provider to implement and support IP-enabled technology manufactured by NEC. Expanets implemented a new NEC 2400 switch with approximately 2,600 ports, Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) and a convenient system administration module that makes it simple to program.

"We were so impressed with the expertise of the Expanets team. We knew they had a lot of experience with the technology and with other educational institutions in the area. The local team cut our system over in just one weekend so that we didn't miss a beat," said Keith Fowlkes, Director of Information Technology, Saint Mary's College. "Now we have a fantastic communication system that will also work for us in the future as we become ready to add new features and applications."

The new system feature, caller ID for on- and off-campus calls, a new voice-mail system that includes notification for all digital phones, E-911 service where calls go directly to the county 911 center with location information and simultaneous notification to campus security, two-way speaker phones and headset jacks, e-mail delivery of phone bills, and a system architecture that allows future wireless and voice over IP applications. All 2,000 Saint Mary's students, faculty and staff are now using the solution.

"We have a lot of expertise in the education sector and understood that Saint Mary's needed to create an environment that is progressive and fosters information sharing, learning and safety," said Chris Younger, president of Expanets. "What we are providing for Saint Mary's is a cost-efficient, yet robust and future-ready solution that contributes nicely to supporting Saint Mary's constituencies both on and off campus."

About Expanets

Expanets is the nation's largest provider of converged communications solutions to mid-sized businesses, and is also strongly positioned to serve larger businesses with multiple locations. Expanets serves 560,000 businesses in over one million client locations. While national in scope, Expanets delivers local service and solutions through its team of more than 3,000 associates, based in more than 100 offices throughout the U.S. Its broad portfolio is based on its strategic relationships with industry-leading manufacturers, service providers, carriers and application developers. For more information, visit the Expanets Web site: www.expanets.com.

(C) 2003 Expanets of North America, LLC. Expanets is a registered trademark of Expanets. Other product and company names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.