MCI Unveils New Network Management Capabilities

Companies Benefit from Enhanced Network Performance and Restoration

ASHBURN, Va., FEBRUARY 1, 2005 - MCI, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCIP) today unveiled new network management capabilities ensuring companies have extremely high levels of network performance, reliability and restoration. With MCI's new Rapid Fault Isolation capabilities, MCI becomes the first provider to completely automate and integrate its infrastructure end-to-end, enabling customer networks to run more smoothly, while delivering some of the fastest fault restoration times available.

"With Rapid Fault Isolation, MCI's quick network restoration and repair gives managed network customers increased confidence that their business will run without interruption," said Nancy Gofus, MCI senior vice president of Product Management. "This assurance becomes increasingly important as customers transition to IP."

With MCI's new Rapid Fault Isolation, companies like Intervoice and Viewpointe are assured of proactive and immediate identification of any anomalies within their networks. MCI's holistic view into a customer's IP, Frame, ATM and MPLS network environments enables it to immediately detect, isolate and pinpoint a fault the moment it occurs. MCI's automated process also helps eliminate human error and shortens the network management cycle, resulting in quicker restorations by an average of eight to 11 minutes.

Customers also receive automatic real-time updates by voice, pager or email on the status of their networks so they are aware how their network is performing at all times.

Jean-Claude Delcroix, vice president of Research at Gartner, estimates that one hour of network downtime can cost up to $400,000 in a highly connected 10,000 employee company. On average, enterprises estimate the cost of downtime of mission critical IT systems at roughly $40 per hour, per employee but Gartner believes the cost can be twice as high.

"Network downtime costs real business dollars," notes Eric Paulak, managing vice president of Network Services for Gartner. "It's critical that in addition to contingency planning and business continuity, companies must plan against network interruptions. The more a business can do up front to optimize network performance and minimize downtime, the more resilient it can be in the face of potentially adverse situations."

MCI offers Managed Network Service customers in the U.S. an industry-leading 3.5 hour mean time to repair service level agreement. Customers can rely on MCI to immediately dispatch one of its 5,400 technical service and support technicians located around the globe to attend to a network disruption event. In the U.S., MCI is also able to automatically send a trouble ticket to the local exchange carrier to quickly address local loop issues.

"One of the key ingredients to success in delivering software as a service is the quality of the infrastructure on which the platform is built," said Daryl Gambrell, director of Managed Services at Intervoice. "Intervoice depends on MCI's managed colocation and network services as the foundation for our voice-application offerings. With MCI's high performance solutions and state-of-the-art facilities, we rest easy knowing that our equipment and the network connecting them enable us to deliver premier solutions to our customers."

To enable Rapid Fault Isolation, MCI has deployed new intelligence into the core of its network and through to the customer's premise by leveraging state-of-the art technology from SMARTS.

MCI's Managed Network Services are available with the company's Managed Security, Hosting and Contact Center Services, as well as MCI Advantage, delivering a total integrated solution for customers. By utilizing one provider to build and maintain their networks, companies of all size can better focus on their business.

Today MCI manages more than 2,900 customer networks in 120 countries.

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.