DENVER, April 18, 2001 - Qwest Communications International Inc., (NYSE: Q) the broadband Internet communications company, today announced managed content delivery services built upon end-to-end content networking technology from Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Qwest's new services, the first utilizing Cisco's complete suite of content networking products, dramatically improves performances of Web sites with less resources and at a lower cost.

Based on Cisco content networking equipment, Qwest's newest offering, called Intelligent Content Environment(sm) is comprised of three services that give companies the ability to create high-impact, cost-effective Web experiences for their clients.

• Qwest Content Switching optimizes Web server performance with load balancing, which reduces the need for additional servers within the network environment. The offering switches content between multiple locations and provides geographic fault tolerance to provide greater scalability and higher availability.

• Qwest Internet CDN is a pre-packaged solution that supports static and rich media content on a dynamic usage-based billing model, is based on a set of distributed content delivery nodes that enable high bandwidth, cost-effective communications with partners and customers worldwide.

• Qwest Enterprise CDN is based on the industry's only network deployable content delivery nodes that enable LAN bandwidth speeds for business-to-business applications within an enterprise, leveraging the resources of existing dedicated Internet connections.

"Intelligent Content Environment enables complex businesses to economically, efficiently and intelligently communicate with their customers over the Internet," said Rick Weston, senior vice president, Qwest Internet Solutions. "The new offerings underscore the benefit of Qwest's early investment in next-generation networks and hosting infrastructure and complement our ability to bring a complete, end-to-end hosting solutions to enterprises and small businesses, and to bring the service to market first."

"Many businesses are looking to service providers such as Qwest to help them deploy a variety of Web applications for public Internet sites and company intranet and extranet applications," said Cheng Wu, vice president and general manager for Cisco's Content Networking Business Unit. "Qwest's investment in Cisco content networking technology shows its commitment to providing content services that help enterprises become more competitive and profitable."

"The deployment of the Cisco content networking platform further defines Qwest's leadership in the broadband hosting marketplace and will enable a spectrum of new capabilities for our customers," said Weston. "Cisco was the only vendor that could provide all of the components of a content-aware infrastructure. Underscoring our significant relationship with Cisco is the fact that we are working together, with other industry leaders, to foster CDN interoperability for next-generation content peering."

Qwest's Intelligent Content Environment infrastructure is based on Cisco solutions for content distribution and management, content routing, content switching and content edge delivery, including Cisco CSS11000 Series Content Service Switches, CDM4670 Content Distribution Managers, CR4450 Content Routers and CE590 and CE7320 Content Engines. Qwest is a Cisco Powered Network.