For release Thursday July 5, 2001 11 AM EDT

Bandwidth Market, Ltd., just won Frost & Sullivan’s 2001 Internet Marketing Strategy Leadership Award. Bandwidth Market, at BandwidthMarket.com, is a Denver, Colorado based exchange. It helps companies buy, sell, and lease telecommunications services, including Internet access, private communications lines from 1 Million bits per second (Mbps) to 10,000 Mbps, co-location services, and dark optical fiber.

Frost & Sullivan gave the award because Bandwidth Market understood distribution and marketing trends, and devised strategies to use the Internet to promote and distribute its products and increase their value. Bandwidth Market’s President, Howard Holme said, "We tell customers detailed information about products, locations, and prices—information that is hard to find elsewhere. Moving toward a ‘transparent market’ increases value for buyers and ultimately sellers."

A Bandwidth Market user searches for "bids" or "offers" for Internet access or for a private line between New York and Washington D.C., or many hundreds of other cities. Many listings are displayed, from T-1 to OC-192 speed. Users click on a "more information" icon to see details about the specific offer or bid, including:

• Specific address of origination/termination (e.g. 60 Hudson Street in New York City)
• Common Language Location Code (CLLI Code) and NPA-NXX for each Point of Presence
• Months of commitment for the contract
• Co-location availability

Frost & Sullivan concluded, "BandwidthMarket.com’s website provides a wealth of information to its service provider sellers, and corporate and carrier buyers." It has many telecom products, and serves 40 countries. It has copious amounts of information about its services and also about the telecommunications industry in general. "Bandwidth Market uses the Internet to drive company growth, and deserves Frost & Sullivan's 2001 Market Engineering Award for Internet Marketing Strategy Leadership."

Bandwidth Market excelled, measured against the following criteria:

• Increased penetration of key target markets
• Increase in information value or services provided to customers
• Reduction in marketing/distribution costs
• Innovative use of the Internet to increase customer interaction
• Increasing consumer awareness of products or services
• Web-site accessibility and ease of navigation
• Frequency of updates
• Articles/Application notes on Website
• FAQ/Help page on Website
• Marketing, promotion, and e-commerce site visibility through Website advertisements, links to other sites and portals, industry magazines and trade journal site recognition, and number of key word hits through search engines (Yahoo, AltaVista, etc.)
• Degree of product line coverage

To make this award, Frost & Sullivan’s analyst team tracked industry marketing and media channels. The team interviewed major market participants and did extensive secondary and Internet research. Companies’ Internet marketing strategies were then compared to determine which company best uses the Internet to serve customers. Finally, Frost & Sullivan compared and ranked competitors for visibility and effectiveness, and Frost & Sullivan presented the award to the company that received the highest industry rank.