Wayport Becomes the Nation's Largest Wi-Fi Hot Spot Provider; Wayport Reaches Deployment Milestone of More Than 6,300 Wi-Fi Hot Spots

Business Wire, Jan 4, 2005

AUSTIN, Texas -- Wayport, one of the world's largest providers of Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) wireless and wired high-speed Internet access at strategic hot spot locations, announced today that it has deployed Wi-Fi wireless service at more than 6,300 locations nationwide and is adding as many as 150 new hot spots per week. By reaching this milestone, Wayport becomes the largest Wi-Fi hot spot provider in the United States.

Wayport has deployed high-speed Internet access directly in more than 700 hotels, 12 major airports, thousands of McDonald's restaurants and, soon, top Hertz airport locations. To date, more than 8 million customer connections have been made through Wayport service. More than 5 million connections occurred in 2004 alone, representing 110% year to year growth.

In October 2004, Wayport broke another company record when nearly 600,000 customers in a single month connected to the Internet through Wayport's network. Growing numbers of mobile travelers and the subscribers of Wayport's 10 strategic roaming partners (including wireless and wireline carriers and aggregators) are seeking out Wayport Wi-Fi hot spot locations to take advantage of the same technology, high-speeds, value and experience that they have in using Wi-Fi at home or in the office.

In addition to directly deploying and managing Wi-Fi locations, Wayport is also a managed service provider at thousands of Wi-Fi hot spots including airports, coffee shops, and major retail locations available nationwide under Wayport's agreement with SBC Communications Inc. Wayport's managed services include access control, customized SBC splash pages that are "Powered by Wayport," and support. These "Powered by Wayport" hot spot locations, combined with Wayport's direct hot spots, total more than 6,300 locations.

"Wayport continues to lead the industry in Wi-Fi deployments at strategic locations," said Dave Vucina, CEO of Wayport. "Our successful large scale deployments, millions of customer connections, and the expansion of our roaming agreements greatly increases the number of customers driven to the venues at which we provide service."

Wayport's innovative Wi-Fi business model for retail brands, called Wi-Fi World(TM), also continues to gain momentum. Wayport has completed Wi-Fi installations in more than 2,300 McDonald's locations in select cities nationwide and is on course to reach a targeted 6,000 installations in McDonald's restaurants in the 3rd quarter of 2005. Hertz has also joined Wi-Fi World(TM), and installations are scheduled for completion in early 2005.

About Wayport, Inc.

Wayport is the nation's largest provider of high-speed Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) wireless and wired Internet access at strategic venues for mobile broadband customers in more than 6,300 locations, including more than 700 major hotels; Wi-Fi wireless Internet access in 6 major airports: Dallas-Fort Worth, Seattle-Tacoma, San Jose, Austin-Bergstrom, Oakland, Buffalo Niagara and others; 16 Laptop Lane airport business centers; McDonald's and Hertz locations; and thousands of additional hot spots including airports, coffee shops, and major retail locations available nationwide under Wayport's agreement with SBC Communications Inc. To learn more, please visit www.wayport.net or to see locations nationwide, visit www.wayport.net/locations.> (C) 2005 Wayport, Inc. All rights reserved. Wayport and the Wayport logo are trademarks of Wayport, Inc. All other names are property of their respective owners.

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