North Kansas City Chooses World Wide Packets for Gigabit Network

SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. and NORTH KANSAS CITY, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 21, 2006--

Growing Residential and Industrial City Selects Gigabit Carrier FTTP Ethernet Solution To Ensure Continued Growth and Economic Development

“North Kansas City is pleased to work with World Wide Packets to bring this bold new offering to its citizens”

World Wide Packets, a leading provider of Carrier Ethernet solutions, today announced that its LightningEdge(R) suite has been selected for widespread deployment in North Kansas City, Missouri to provide the first Gigabit-to-the-Premise broadband access solution. North Kansas City will utilize the city's existing fiber-optic network, in conjunction with new construction, to create this benchmark setting residential and businesses services network. Leveraging World Wide Packets' solutions and innovations, the network will provide Gigabit Ethernet over fiber delivery to the city's thousands of residential locations and over 800 businesses.

The LightningEdge solution is being deployed over two existing fiber-optic rings which were previously built for the city's internal use. Additional fiber-optic cable is being installed to support these rings. North Kansas City will operate this first of its kind network to provide retail services such as e-mail, basic high-speed internet access, Storage Area Networking and virus protection. The Gigabit-to-the-Premise network is expected to go live citywide in the spring 2006.

"North Kansas City is pleased to work with World Wide Packets to bring this bold new offering to its citizens," said Gene Bruns, Mayor of North Kansas City. "With the city's introduction of Carrier Ethernet services, the entire community, young and old now has access to vital technologies which are driving the world forward."

North Kansas City realized it needed a scalable solution that would meet the city's growing bandwidth demand at an efficient cost. North Kansas City's uniquely populous business community is driving bandwidth requirements which are expected to grow exponentially. Therefore, the solution it selected had to easily match the needs of this rapid bandwidth expansion.

North Kansas City chose World Wide Packets' LightningEdge Gigabit-to-the-Premise solution because of its scalability, versatility and cost-efficiency for delivering networks with increasing bandwidth and service uptime requirements. World Wide Packets has been on the market for over six years and is a recognized leader in delivering Carrier Ethernet solutions to a host of service providers and municipalities. World Wide Packets provides Gigabit delivery at unit price points less than competitor's 100Mgb per unit offerings. Users are provided with significantly more bandwidth, at less cost.

"World Wide Packets is extremely pleased to be providing North Kansas City with the flexible, scalable solution it needs to propel the city into the 21st century, " said Dave Curry, president and CEO of World Wide Packets. "The city realizes the importance of bringing the latest technologies to the community in order to generate economic growth and a greater quality of life, and World Wide Packets' proven Carrier Ethernet solutions are allowing just that."

About World Wide Packets

World Wide Packets is a leading provider of Carrier Ethernet solutions that allow service providers, cable operators, emerging carriers and municipalities to realize a new level of speed and agility in the deployment of revenue generating Ethernet services. With World Wide Packets' LightningEdge(R) product family, carriers can address the demand with their growing subscriber base by fully leveraging the power, flexibility and low cost of Ethernet technology, while dramatically reducing the CapEx and OpEx of existing legacy networks. Only World Wide Packets offers the QoS, scalability, reliability and manageability necessary to making Carrier Ethernet services such as IPTV, VoIP, mission critical data and wireless transport a reality. For more information on World Wide Packets, please visit www.worldwidepackets.com.

Access Brilliance, Ethernet to the Subscriber, ETTS, Fiber to the Subscriber, FTTS, LightningEdge, World Wide Packets and the World Wide Packets logo are trademarks of World Wide Packets Incorporated. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.