HERNDON, Va. -- PAETEC Holding Corp. (NASDAQ GS: PAET) and its subsidiaries, which serve the growing network needs of government enterprises and carrier customers, announced today that it has been awarded a three-year contract by the Defense Information System Agency (DISA) to provide Fort Drum with fiber and dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) services.

Located in northern New York near Watertown and just outside of the Adirondack Mountains, Fort Drum trains an estimated 80,000 troops annually and is home to the 10(th) Mountain Division. Fort Drum, like other major U.S. Army facilities requires the highest level of service, approaching 100 percent up-time. To accommodate this need, DISA has awarded PAETEC a contract to install diverse fiber access systems from its backbone network near Syracuse and Watertown, NY to the base.

"When you have a military facility that houses one of the Army's largest units, you need to be confident that the network services are dependable, " said Mike Magliato, PAETEC vice president of government markets. "This is the twenty-fifth military facility that we have provided these services to, showing the quality offered by our diverse fiber routes and redundancy."

Paetec Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: PAET)