BTI Accelerates Local Switch Deployment Schedule; BTI Announces Plans to Double Number of Local Switches In 2000 - Lucent 5E 2000 local switches - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, April 10, 2000

Raleigh-based BTI, a leading provider of integrated telecommunications services in the Southeast has announced that it will install nine new Lucent 5E 2000 local switches this year. This will bring its total number of local switches to 18.

BTI, the nation's seventh-largest competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), began offering local telephone service in December 1997 and has sold more than 100,000 local access lines. At the end of 1999, the Company had nine local switches operational in Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro and Wilmington, N.C.; Atlanta, Ga.; Jacksonville and Orlando, Fla.; and Greenville and Columbia, S.C.

"Businesses are realizing that they finally have a choice in who will provide them local dial tone," said BTI Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Butch Charlton. "We own and operate our own facilities so we are better able to control the cost and functionality of our system and provide our customers with the most reliable service possible," continued Charlton.

Beyond Tampa, Fla., in which BTI recently turned up a local switch, the cities planned to receive the new local switches are Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Charleston S.C.; Greenville, N.C.; Norfolk and Richmond, Va.; and Chattanooga, Nashville and Knoxville, Tenn. Additional cities are currently being evaluated for 2001 deployment.

BTI's acceleration of their local switch deployment schedule is the result of a recent capital investment by Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe VII, L.P. (WCAS), the New York-based private equity firm.

BTI (www.btitele.com ) is a facilities-based integrated communications provider (ICP) serving primarily small and medium-sized business customers in the southeastern United States since 1983. The company offers a full suite of integrated retail services to business customers, including local, long distance, data solutions, Internet access, frame relay, paging, web design and hosting and other enhanced services. The company also offers wholesale services, including switched, private line, special access and prepaid calling card services to other telecommunications carriers and end-user customers. BTI has five Alcatel USA 600E digital long distance switches in Raleigh, Atlanta, Orlando, Dallas and New York. BTI has also successfully deployed ten Lucent 5E 2000 local switches throughout the Southeast. BTI's fiber network covers approximately 4,400 route miles of fiber across the eastern United States, including a 100-mile fiber optic network already in service linking Raleigh, Durham, Cary and the Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina.