[July 22, 1999]

Crys-Tel Plans For Expansion Into Multimedia And Wireless IP Telephony Using AboveNet Network

Crys-Tel Telecommunications.com, Inc., an international carrier utilizing the Internet to provide economical international telecommunications services, announced plans to expand its IP telephony services to support unified messaging, video conferencing, on-demand multimedia, and the wireless transmission of data and telephony.

A key component of these plans is Crys-Tel's use of AboveNet's global Internet network, which provides Crys-Tel with superior Internet connectivity and bandwidth on-demand.

Crys-Tel, one of the leading innovators in Internet telephony, is aggressively opening points of presence in multiple cities in Europe, and has created a global presence through partnerships with two other IP telephony carriers, TeleMatrix of Tokyo, and Abacus Telecom of Paris. Crys-Tel routes Internet traffic to AboveNet's Internet Service Exchange (ISX) in San Jose, California, where its partners TeleMatrix and Abacus are also co-located. These three companies, all of whom use Nokia IP telephony gateways, exchange traffic through a private peering agreement, and together they form a global IP network. AboveNet provides Crys-Tel and its partners with access to significant bandwidth, which currently totals10.5 Gbps, and access to more 257 private and public peering agreements with leading ISPs in the U.S. and worldwide. This capacity, combined with Crys-Tel's agreements with TeleMatrix and Abacus, is allowing the company to enter new service areas that require high bandwidth, low latency, fault-tolerant Internet connectivity.

"Crys-Tel is now poised to bring IP telephony service to the next stage of development," said Lorenzo Musa, President and CEO of Crys-Tel. "Our partnerships with TeleMatrix and Abacus, combined with the network performance and bandwidth on-demand from AboveNet are enabling us to leverage innovations in such areas as broadband transmission of video, and wireless data."

Unified messaging, one of the new services Crys-Tel plans to offer, allows users access to fax, email and voice messages in a single list from a choice of devices including a PC computer or a telephone. Wireless transmission will enable users to connect portable and notebook computers to the Internet without a telephone jack.

"AboveNet is very pleased to be an integral part of Crys-Tel's plans to 'push the envelope' for IP Telephony," said David Rand, Chief Technology Officer of AboveNet. "We see tremendous opportunities for IP Telephony as mobile and handheld devices become more widely used, and as satellite telecommunications technology becomes more tightly integrated into the Internet."

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