Covad Communications Group, Inc., a leading national broadband service provider of high-speed Internet and network access, today announced a strategic...

Covad Communications Group, Inc., a leading national broadband service provider of high-speed Internet and network access, today announced a strategic relationship with Broadwing Communications, a fully consolidated subsidiary of Corvis Corporation, to provide its enterprise customers with more broadband choices in the country's top Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).

Under the agreement, Broadwing will offer business class Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service to its enterprise customers as a last-mile access alternative for Frame Relay and Internet Protocol (IP) based services. Covad's nationwide DSL network, which currently covers more than 45 million homes and businesses, will link to Broadwing's nationwide, all-optical network. Broadwing expects to begin offering this service to its customers during the first quarter of 2004. "Covad is pleased to be teaming with Broadwing and with the opportunity for continued growth in our business class offerings," said Charles Hoffman, Covad president and chief executive officer. "Our broadband expertise and our ability to combine our nationwide DSL network with Broadwing's all-optical network will enable them to offer highly competitive enterprise solutions to their customers."

"Our large enterprise customers have diverse networking needs. They are continually looking for cost-effective ways to interconnect their smaller facilities to their corporate wide area networks and to offer redundancy to current private line access connections. This is particularly important as customers look to add new enhanced services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video conferencing to existing data networks," said Mark F. Spagnolo, Broadwing chief executive officer. "We're excited about this new relationship with Covad. By adding nationwide DSL connectivity to our portfolio of offerings, we believe we can respond to a larger percentage of customer opportunities," Spagnolo continued.


About Covad
Covad is a leading national broadband service provider of high-speed Internet and network access utilizing Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology. It offers DSL, T1, managed security, hosting, IP, dial-up services and bundled voice and data services directly through Covad's network and through Internet Service Providers, value-added resellers, telecommunications carriers and affinity groups to small and medium-sized businesses and home users. Covad operates the largest national DSL network with services currently available in 96 of the top Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Covad's network currently covers more than 45 million homes and businesses and reaches approximately 45 percent of all US homes and businesses. Corporate headquarters is located at 110 Rio Robles San Jose, CA 95134. Telephone: 1-888-GO-COVAD.

For more information on Covad, please vistit www.covad.com