MCI Unveils New Managed Data Protection Service To Strengthen Business Continuity

Enhanced Smart Backup Helps Businesses Quickly and Reliably Restore Critical Company Information In the Event of Data Loss

ASHBURN, Va, DECEMBER 1, 2004 - MCI, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCIP) today introduced a new fully managed data protection service to help companies strengthen their business continuity efforts. With MCI's new Enhanced Smart Backup, companies hosting with MCI can now more easily and rapidly restore critical company information in the event of anything from simple data loss to major disasters.

MCI's latest addition to its Enterprise Hosting portfolio represents a new alternative to traditional tape-based backup solutions by utilizing cutting-edge, disk-to-disk technology to more efficiently back up and restore data. Enhanced Smart Backup enables enterprises of all sizes to benefit from faster data backup and restoration, improved data integrity, reduced capital costs and increased scalability. MCI customers can also more easily retrieve file or system restores on-demand, since the data is securely stored online.

"MCI is bringing next-generation hosting services to market that deliver greater value for our enterprise customers," said Nancy Gofus, senior vice president of Product Management for MCI. "MCI's Enhanced Smart Backup helps companies lower their total cost of ownership while tapping into new business continuity capabilities that far surpass traditional backup and restore solutions."

According to Enterprise Strategy Group, corporations leave nearly 30 percent of their critical data unprotected due to lack of time, tools and resources. In addition, 27 percent of apparently successful backups cannot be restored, leaving a significant portion of information assets at risk.

From its monitoring and security systems to backup reporting, MCI Enhanced Smart Backup offers Enterprise Hosting customers end-to-end data protection. MCI provides and manages the bi-coastal infrastructure required, including redundant servers, storage arrays, IP network connectivity, operating systems and backup software. MCI's specially trained and certified technical experts ensure that the solution is continuously up and running and can troubleshoot complex issues should they arise.

One of the key advantages of MCI's new Enhanced Smart Backup is that it only copies unique data changes, eliminating the need to copy an entire data set after the initial scan. This approach greatly reduces the volume of data backed up daily and does not tax server and network computing resources in the process.

With MCI's new disk-to-disk solution, utilizing technology from Avamar, customers can realize significant savings over traditional tape-based methods, especially for variable and dynamic applications such as databases. Unlike traditional offerings that include charges for all incremental and full backups, Enhanced Smart Backup is based on customer usage, determined by the amount of actual data protected.

By outsourcing their critical backup and restore needs along with other application management functions, MCI customers receive one of the highest levels of business continuity protection available, while eliminating the multiple costs associated with building and managing an in-house solution.

As a long-time leader delivering advanced hosting services, MCI offers a complete continuum of innovative managed hosting and Data Center services. MCI/Digex Enterprise Hosting holds more than 300 professional certifications from leading technology organizations like Microsoft, HP and Sun Microsystems and is compliant with SAS70 certified Type I and II. MCI Hosting is also positioned in the Leaders Quadrant in Gartner Inc.'s Web Hosting Magic Quadrant*. According to Gartner, Inc., leaders are vendors who are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.

About MCI
MCI, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCIP) is a leading global communications provider, delivering innovative, cost-effective, advanced communications connectivity to businesses, governments and consumers. With the industry's most expansive global IP backbone, based on the number of company-owned points of presence, and wholly-owned data networks, MCI develops the converged communications products and services that are the foundation for commerce and communications in today's market. For more information, go to www.mci.com.

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*The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted October, 2004 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.