TORONTO, ON - September 28, 2005 - Allstream, one of Canada's leading national business communication solutions providers, today announced the deployment of its IP-based enterprise contact centre solution. An important next step in the evolution of Allstream's overall contact centre strategy, this fully-managed IP-based solution will enable enterprise customers to implement a full suite of multimedia contact centre services and applications quickly, reliably and cost effectively.

Allstream has made a significant enhancement to its existing Cisco Systems-based contact centre infrastructure by deploying Cisco's leading IP-based contact centre platform. As a result, Allstream's advanced solution now offers the benefits of a scalable, IP-based multimedia contact centre allowing agents to interact by voice, email, web chat and fax, and enabling customers to significantly reduce operating costs while improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

"This next generation solution builds on our knowledge and expertise in delivering compelling contact centre solutions for enterprise customers," said John MacDonald, President, Allstream. "This also strengthens our leadership position in offering innovative IP-based technologies to meet the changing needs of businesses today."

"Allstream has a long and successful track record in building some of North America's largest contact centres," said Terry Walsh, President, Cisco Systems Canada Co. "Today's announcement signifies the ongoing evolution of our longstanding relationship and common vision to offer innovative contact centre solutions which leverage IP communications to deliver improved customer service at lower operating costs."

Allstream is already deploying this new solution within its own contact centres across Canada, leveraging its Professional Services expertise as part of the implementation. The Company also continues to work with other key technology partners such as Hewlett Packard (Canada) Co. to design and implement contact centre solutions for its enterprise customers.

"Our focus on working with Allstream in a truly collaborative way will help to deliver integrated contact centre solutions that enable enterprise customers to be more agile and productive," said Paul Tsaparis, President and CEO, Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co.

Allstream's managed IP Contact Centre solution offers a range of benefits:

• Increased contact centre productivity - Transforms the call centre into a multimedia contact centre with feature-rich automatic call distributor (ACD), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and computer telephony integration (CTI) services.
• Improved customer service levels - Access to a full suite of advanced administrative and reporting tools (advanced scheduling, sophisticated management tools, skills-based call distribution) for the effective operation of the customers' call centre.
• Reduced costs - Leverage the power of converged IP technology while maintaining consistent service quality. Provides a variable "pay-per-user" model eliminating substantial up-front capital investment.
• Rapid deployment - As a hosted "on demand" solution, customers can quickly deploy an IP-based contact centre without the need to build their own network infrastructure.
• Service reliability - ensure service reliability through Allstream's industry leading national network that provides the quality of service needed for converged IP networking.

For more information about Allstream's managed IP Contact Centre solution, visit www.allstream.com.