ENRON ANNOUNCES OPEN ACCESS FOR POOLING POINT CONNECTIVITY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, April 25, 2001
HOUSTON -- Enron Broadband Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Enron Corp. (NYSE: ENE), announced today that it is providing open access within its pooling point network for buyers and sellers of bandwidth. This approach allows qualified market participants the ability to connect to Enron’s pooling points and transact with all connected parties.
Enron has deployed pooling points in 25 cities worldwide. Eighteen of the pooling points reside in the U.S., six in Europe and one in Asia. Pooling points create a switching platform for enabling and monitoring bandwidth transactions between buyers and sellers. They allow quick bandwidth provisioning times and provide access to multiple networks and locations.
“We are encouraged by the market’s receptiveness to the concept of using pooling points to encourage more efficient network connectivity. Opening up our pooling points gives companies easy access to bandwidth services from a wide range of providers and creates regional hubs for exchanging bandwidth services,” said Kevin Hannon, president and COO of Enron Broadband Services. “Much like privately owned and operated trading hubs in other markets, such as the Henry Hub for natural gas and Cinergy for electricity, our pooling points will serve as key aggregation and interconnection points that stimulate liquidity in the bandwidth intermediation market and provide valuable services to customers.”
As part of its open access approach, Enron has developed standard terms and conditions to ensure uniform service delivery. Enron provides competitive pricing for connection fees (capped at $1,000 per port) to facilitate timely and efficient interconnection. While companies that elect to interconnect at Enron’s pooling points are not obligated to transact solely with Enron, standard transaction fees are waived for transactions involving Enron services. Accelerated provisioning of circuits can be arranged through Enron’s Internet-based platform, www.EnronOnline.com.
Enron introduced the concept of trading bandwidth capacity in May 1999. The market for bandwidth has since accelerated, and today many participants buy and sell bandwidth on flexible, market-based terms. Benefits include greater price transparency, shorter provisioning times and firm delivery of bandwidth. Enron is providing DS-3 to OC-48 capacity between and within major metropolitan cities for periods ranging from one week to 20 years.
About Enron
Enron Broadband Services is a leading provider of high quality, high bandwidth delivery and application services. The company’s business model combines the power of the Enron Intelligent Networkä, Enron’s Broadband Operating System, bandwidth trading and intermediation services, and high-bandwidth applications to fundamentally improve the experience and functionality of the Internet. Enron’s Broadband Operating System allows application developers to dynamically provision bandwidth for the quality of service necessary to deliver broadband content. Enron is also creating a market for bandwidth that will allow network providers to scale to meet the demands required by increasingly complex applications. Enron Broadband Services can be found on the Web at www.enron.net.
Enron is one of the world’s leading electricity, natural gas and communications companies. The company, with revenues of $101 billion in 2000, markets electricity and natural gas, delivers physical commodities and financial and risk management services to customers around the world, and has developed an intelligent network platform to facilitate online business. Fortune magazine has named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years. Enron’s Internet address is www.enron.com. The stock is traded under the ticker symbol “ENE.”
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For additional information please contact:
Shelly Mansfield
(713) 853-4589
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