Primus BEX Expands to Vancouver, Edmonton, Brampton and London After High Demand

BEX - BUSINESS ETHERNET XTENDED™ - Set for Additional Expansion in First Half of 2012

TORONTO, April 25, 2012 /CNW/ - Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc. (Primus Canada), a wholly owned subsidiary of PTGi (Primus Telecommunications Group, Incorporated) (NYSE: PTGI), today announced it has expanded the availability of BEX - BUSINESS ETHERNET XTENDED™ to Vancouver, Edmonton, Brampton and London in order to better support the significant customer demand for the service. The company also intends to expand the reach of BEX into four additional Ontario markets in the coming months.

BEX delivers high bandwidth at affordable rates to companies over Ethernet-in-the-First-Mile protocols that enable them to support Internet-intensive applications and technology while creating greater opportunities for efficiency and success. With BEX, businesses can save 47 percent compared to fibre for the same reliable dedicated access their business needs.  Additionally, given three quarters of Canadian businesses don't have access to fibre based Internet, BEX enables small and medium businesses to get the quality and speed of connection that they otherwise could not access or afford.

"We have seen greater than a 250 percent increase in demand for our BEX technology over the last six months, which is phenomenal for a service that launched a little over one year ago.  At the same time, we have had many companies who are outside of our current footprint letting us know that they want access to the service.  Today we are able to meet part of this demand by expanding to four new cities and committing to additional growth later this year," said AJ Byers, Executive Vice President of Primus Business Services. "With this BEX expansion, more companies are now able to take advantage of increased bandwidth as well as upload and download speeds of up to 20 Mbps at prices that are more affordable than traditional services."

BEX is delivered over existing infrastructure making it an easy and fast deployment for customers.  With the rapid migration of voice and computing services to the cloud as the driving force, Primus Canada is providing a symmetrical Internet solution that, unlike a DSL or cable connection, provides customers with the same 20 Mbps speeds when uploading as they get downloading. These fast upload speeds ensure business applications in the cloud, VOIP, VPN and video streaming run smoothly, and eliminate poor voice quality, jittery video, and cloud application slowness, that are typically associated with slow upload speeds. Given that customer bandwidth is not shared, slower speeds due to congestion are also no longer an impediment to the consistent and reliable performance of business critical online applications.

Unison Health and Community Services, a non-profit, community-based organization that assists 22,000 individuals through four Toronto locations, uses Primus BEX to connect two of its locations to each other and the communities it serves.

"It's critical for our teams to be able to quickly and easily reach each other and the clients we help. The speed and service quality delivered by BEX is a dramatic improvement that solved the network issues we experienced with our old traditional Internet provider. This major improvement in speed and quality, combined with the cost savings achieved with BEX helps us operate much more efficiently," said Jamal Alqadi, Information Technology Specialist with Unison Health and Community Services.

Since launching BEX in March 2011, Primus now services seven cities, and plans to continue growing the footprint with coverage launching in Brantford, Hamilton, Kingston, and Windsor by mid-2012. These expansions underscore the company's ongoing commitment to substantially invest in broadband network infrastructure. With the continuing increase of digital communications and technology-based business transactions, the demand for an infrastructure to support such activities also continues to grow. With Primus Canada's BEX - BUSINESS ETHERNET XTENDED™, users are able to experience better quality, improved support lead time and faster time to resolution.

"PTGi understands that organizations of all sizes download information from the Internet, run online business applications and upload content to customers around the world and therefore must have access to reliable, fast Internet service," said Primus Canada CEO Andrew Day. "This is a cornerstone of our company's ongoing commitment to being a leading provider of advanced communication solutions, including traditional and IP voice and data services."

About Primus Business Services

Primus Business Services is a leading national data centre and managed services solutions provider, offering services that include virtual storage and security, disaster recovery and cloud computing, voice, and IP connectivity solutions. Primus Business Services owns and manages eight world-class, state-of-the-art data centres across Canada.  Primus Business Services is a division of Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc. Visit www.primuspbs.ca for more information.

About PTGi

PTGi (Primus Telecommunications Group, Incorporated) is a leading provider of advanced communication solutions, including broadband Internet, traditional and IP voice, data, mobile services, collocation, hosting, and outsourced managed services to business and residential customers in the United States, Canada, and Australia. PTGi is also one of the leading international wholesale service providers to telecommunications carriers worldwide. PTGi owns and operates its own global network of next-generation IP soft switches, media gateways, hosted IP/SIP platforms, broadband infrastructure, fiber capacity, and data centers located in Canada, and Australia. Founded in 1994, PTGi is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

Primus Canada Media Contact:
Denise Gagnon, APEX Public Relations, [email protected], [phone]

PTGI Media Contact:
Mike Houghton, Communicreate, [email protected], [phone]