Mazda Picks Broadwing

AUSTIN, Texas -- The integrated communications leader Broadwing Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of Broadwing Inc. (NYSE: BRW), today announced a three-year agreement with Mazda North American Operations to provide Broadwing's MultiConnect and MultiConnect Redirect. Mazda, a leading vehicle manufacturer with more than 700 dealerships in the United States, is using MultiConnect to connect its domestic plants and operations centers around the country. By deciding to replace its frame relay network with MultiConnect, a point-to-multipoint private line solution, Mazda can now transmit all operations, accounting, email and other corporate WAN traffic via the Broadwing network, resulting in faster response times for accessing corporate applications, email services, web browsing and an overall more robust connection. In addition, Mazda is utilizing Broadwing's MultiConnect Redirect enhancement, which guards against customer premise failures and regional disasters by redirecting all remote T-1s to a predefined secondary host location. This business continuity solution enables recovery of remote wide area network (WAN) locations to a customer's secondary (back-up) host. "As we looked at our options, Broadwing offered greater bandwidth, the flexibility to converge multiple types of traffic, including voice, video and data, over a single network, all for a competitive price," said Michael Swancutt, system manager, communications, Mazda North American Operations. Broadwing Inc.