ASHBURN, Va., April 25 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/InfoQuest Introduces Industry's Best Time to Repair Guarantee Unveils Third-Party Service Level Agreements Worldwide MCI, Inc. (Nasdaq: MCIP) today announced it is raising the bar on service level agreements (SLAs) for its end-to-end Managed Network Services. Extending its global networking position with an enhanced five-point guarantee, MCI is offering companies an unparalleled set of SLAs for performance, reliability and restoration. Taking advantage of its Rapid Fault Isolation capabilities with a 5,400-employee global technical support team and world-class IMPACT(SM) fault management architecture, MCI is now offering an unmatched network restoration guarantee to its Managed Network Services customers. The Company has improved its restoration SLA to guarantee a 3.5 hour time to repair in the U.S., a four-hour time to repair for third-party managed networks in the U.S. and key global business centers, and a six-hour time to repair for remote regions of the world. Global business centers covered by the four-hour guarantee are located in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. "MCI Managed Network Services customers benefit from knowing that their networks are supported by the best set of SLAs in the industry," said Nancy Gofus, MCI senior vice president of Product Management. "With our newly enhanced restoration and third-party performance guarantees, we have set new standards supported by what we believe to be the industry's best technical team." MCI is one of the first to offer a standard set of SLAs covering third-party networks. Showcasing its role as a network integrator, MCI guarantees it can deliver the same or better performance than third-party providers. Fortified by its extensive network and e-bonding capabilities, MCI will oversee third-party networks for enterprises, including monitoring, management, and ongoing maintenance. As a result, customers can take full advantage of network diversity, while maintaining a single network management point of contact. Other enhancements to MCI's five-point service level agreements include: -- 100 percent site availability guarantee for redundant (dual-router, dual-circuit) networks, -- Guarantees based on actual-time-to-repair versus a mean-time-to- repair, and -- Third-party SLAs that match, or even beat, the provider of origin. According to Zeus Kerravala, Yankee Group vice president of Enterprise Infrastructure Research, one hour of network downtime can cost up to $4.5 million in a large enterprise. On average, enterprises estimate the downtime costs of mission critical IT systems at roughly $40 per hour, per employee. MCI is also delivering monitoring and management, down to the application level, with its newly available Apps Integrity product. The Apps Integrity offering allows network managers to better manage and troubleshoot new applications in greater detail. The tool shows an aggregate view of applications traffic across an entire network as well as individual flows from client-to-server, server-to-client and client-to-client, allowing businesses to better understand how their networks are performing from the application layer down. Newly enhanced SLAs will be available to all new Managed Network Services customers utilizing IP, Frame Relay, Private IP, ATM and Private Line beginning in May. MCI's five-point guarantee, includes service commitments for network availability, restoration, service installation, proactive outage notification and change management. MCI supports all performance commitments with financial credits. MCI's Managed Network Services are available with the company's Managed Security, Hosting and Contact Center Services, as well as MCI Advantage, delivering a total integrated solution. By utilizing one provider to build and maintain their networks, companies can better focus on their business. Today, MCI manages more than 3,100 customer networks in 149 countries, including overseeing more than 22,000 non-MCI connections from more than 60 network service providers globally. About MCI MCI, Inc. (Nasdaq: MCIP) is a leading global communications provider, delivering innovative, cost-effective, advanced communications connectivity to businesses, governments and consumers. With the industry's most expansive global IP backbone, based on the number of company-owned points of presence, and wholly-owned data networks, MCI develops the converged communications products and services that are the foundation for commerce and communications in today's market. For more information, go to http://www.mci.com. SOURCE MCI, Inc. CONTACT: Janet Brumfield of MCI, Inc., +1-800-644-NEWS, [email protected]/ Web site: http://www.mci.com / (MCIP) --Distributed by AsiaNet (www.asianetnews.net)--