Electronic Bonding Streamlines Ordering Process

DENVER, April 25, 2001 - Local telephone competition took another step forward as Allegiance Telecom, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALGX), a leading facilities-based integrated communications provider, and Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE:Q), the broadband Internet communications company, announced the completion of electronic bonding between their operations support systems (OSS), reducing the time required to process customer orders for local telephone service requests.

Electronic bonding enables computers at different phone companies to communicate with each other in real-time, providing for rapid sharing of customer information, service requests and other data. This enables Allegiance to process orders quicker and at a lower cost to better serve their local customers. More importantly, electronic bonding makes it easier for business customers in the Allegiance Telecom markets of Denver, Phoenix, Seattle and Minneapolis/St. Paul (and the soon-to-open Portland, Ore. market) to switch from one local service provider to another.

"The lack of electronic bonding between facilities-based local carriers has been widely recognized as the principal bottleneck one of the requirements in realizing facilitating the competitive local service marketplace envisioned by the Telecommunications Act of 1996," said Royce Holland, chairman and chief executive officer of Allegiance Telecom. "Today’s announcement with Qwest is another major step toward reaching our goal of implementing electronic bonding with all incumbent local phone providers."

"This is a great example of cooperation and efficiency is an excellent example of what can be accomplished when two companies getting together and using a competitive carrier and incumbent local provider cooperatively use their energies and resources to better serve customers," said Gregory M. Casey, Qwest executive vice president of wholesale markets. "This was a collaborative effort marked by teamwork and cooperation by both companies to foster competition in the local telephone marketOnce again, it proves that our markets are open to competitors."

Currently, many competitive local exchange carriers have unique electronic systems that may not conform to industry standards. Allegiance Telecom, however, developed its electronic interfaces to conform with Qwest’s systems. This accomplishment builds on Allegiance Telecom's previously successful electronic bonding of OSS with Verizon in New York and Massachusetts, SBC in Texas and Missouri, Pacific Bell in California, Ameritech in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, and BellSouth in Georgia and Florida. Allegiance uses MetaSolv Software's 'TBS' application to process the LSR and DSET Corporation’s 'ezLocal' software as the bonding application to Qwest.

By using these electronic bonding interfaces, Allegiance is able to receive from Qwest a "firm order confirmation" - an acknowledgement that an order has been received and processed - much more rapidly than a manual process. This confirmation is typically sent within four hours, and on many occasions, it is sent almost instantaneously. In addition, Allegiance has also developed proprietary software to automatically process the confirmed information into their network inventory and to their field services personnel.

Through its many automation efforts to streamline ordering, Allegiance processes more accurate orders - immediately - than if the order was taken manually. Customer order data is entered into the system only once; there's no need to keystroke order information several different times for several different company systems, greatly minimizing the possibility of typographical errors that can delay service.

Allegiance Telecom has bonded electronically with Qwest for both local service requests (LSRs) for unbundled loops and access service requests (ASRs) for special access requests such as high capacity T-1 lines. Allegiance is LSR bonded in six regional Bell operating company regions, encompassing 24 of Allegiance's current 29 markets, and is ASR bonded in 100 percent of its current markets.

Electronic bonding will allows Allegiance to significantly increase the volume of customers that can be switched to Allegiance service each month and help eliminate opportunities for service interruptions during the switching of a customer's service from one local provider to another.

Allegiance Telecom is a facilities-based integrated communications provider headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Allegiance offers businesses a complete package of telecommunications services, including local, long distance, international calling, high-speed data transmission and Internet services. Allegiance is targeting 36 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. with its "one-stop shopping" approach. Allegiance's common stock is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol ALGX.