BROOMFIELD, Colo., -- Aug. 30, 2004 -- Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:LVLT) today announced that it is has been awarded a contract to provide cable operator Charter Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:CHTR) with long distance voice services and local interconnection services in select markets.
Under the terms of the agreement, Charter will utilize Level 3’s (3)Voice® Termination services to complete long-distance telephone calls made by Charter broadband subscribers. Level 3 will also provide (3)Link® Private Line services to facilitate local interconnection. Charter currently offers voice telephone service in three markets and has previously announced that its telephony offering will pass one million households by year’s end.
“This agreement with Level 3 will enable us to improve our cost structure and help accelerate our deployment of telephone services,” said Tom Cullen, Executive Vice President of Advanced Services for Charter. “As a recognized VoIP leader and backbone operator, Level 3 has the network, technical expertise, and experience we were looking for in an underlying provider.”
“We’re very pleased that Charter has elected to use our VoIP services,” said Sureel Choksi, president of Softswitch Services for Level 3. “We look forward to enabling Charter, one of the cable industry’s most technically innovative operators, as it deploys residential phone service.”
Level 3 has been providing VoIP termination service since December 1999 to PTTs, inter-exchange carriers, enhanced service providers, cable operators, and other companies in the U.S. and abroad. Today, Level 3 offers a full range of wholesale, residential, and business voice services over a robust softswitch-based network platform that carries more than 30 billion minutes of IP-based voice and data calls every month.
For more information about Level 3’s portfolio of VoIP services, please visit www.Level3.com.
About Level 3 Communications
Level 3 (Nasdaq:LVLT) is an international communications and information services company. The company operates one of the largest Internet backbones in the world, is one of the largest providers of wholesale dial-up service to ISPs in North America and is the primary provider of Internet connectivity for millions of broadband subscribers, through its cable and DSL partners. The company offers a wide range of communications services over its 23,000 mile broadband fiber optic network including Internet Protocol (IP) services, broadband transport and infrastructure services, colocation services, and patented Softswitch managed modem and voice services. Its Web address is www.Level3.com.
