eLEC Communications To Offer Local Telecom Services in Nine Southeastern States: Interconnection Agreement With BellSouth Enables Rapid Market Entry.

Business and Technology Editors

NORWALK, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 18, 2000

eLEC Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:ELEC) announced today the signing of a region-wide interconnection agreement with BellSouth (NYSE: BLS).

Under the agreement eLEC will utilize combinations of unbundled network elements (UNEs) provided by BellSouth Interconnection Services, BellSouth's wholesale business unit, to offer local service to customers in nine southeastern states. eLEC is currently licensed to provide local access services in Florida and Kentucky and is in the process of filing for certification in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

"This agreement is an important next step in our nationwide local communications rollout," said Paul Riss, eLEC's CEO. "We can now use Unbundled Network Element - Platform (UNE-P) capabilities in both the BellSouth and the Bell Atlantic (NYSE:BEL) regions to build a base of local access customers. UNE-P continues to be the most viable service offering available for rapid market entry with no significant up-front capital expenditures, no possibilities of stranded plant, no network build-out or customer provisioning delays.

"eLEC is actively seeking local access lines through an acceleration of our marketing efforts. Our new Florida subsidiary, TelcoSoftware.com, has people in place who know BellSouth and who can begin provisioning lines for us. We have customers in Florida waiting to sign up on the eLEC network," Riss said.

eLEC Communications Corp. is a publicly-traded local telecommunications company that is taking advantage of the convergence of the current and future competitive technological and regulatory developments in the Internet and telecommunications markets. The company provides an integrated suite of communications services to small and medium-sized business customers, including local, long distance, dial-up access, dedicated access, xDSL, and Web site design and hosting.

This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. eLEC's actual results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such a difference include, among others, availability of management; availability, terms, and deployment of capital; eLEC's ability to successfully market its services to current and new customers, generate customer demand for its product and services in the geographical areas in which eLEC can operate, access new markets, negotiate and maintain suitable interconnection agreements with the incumbent local exchange carriers, and negotiate and maintain suitable vendor relationships, all in a timely manner, at reasonable cost and on satisfactory terms and conditions, as well as regulatory, legislative and judicial developments that could cause actual results to vary in such forward-looking statements.