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IU and McLeodUSA sign agreement for phone service
Jan. 13, 2000
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The deregulation of the telecommunications industry and major new advances in technology have resulted in the emergence of important new companies providing telephone services. This development has in turn led to considerable decreases in the prices of these services, which constitute a significant expenditure for large organizations such as Indiana University.
IU announced today (Jan. 13) that it has signed a new three-year contract with one of these companies, McLeodUSA, to provide long distance and international telephone services to all campuses of the university on the expiration of its previous contract with AT&T.
This contract will result in savings of approximately 30 percent to the university in the total cost of such services, assuming that the present mix of long distance and international calls continues.
"The savings will become available for schools and units in the university to use more productively in support of their central teaching and research missions," said Michael A. McRobbie, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer. "We expect to see continuing reductions in the costs over the coming decade as telephone services converge to become fully digital."
McLeodUSA President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Gray said, "McLeodUSA is delighted to have been selected for this important contract with such a major research university. We have signed over 30 similar agreements with colleges and universities and are pleased to add IU to that list. IU becomes one of our largest customers in higher education and one of our first customers of such size in Indiana. Our contract with IU will help to establish McLeodUSA across Indiana and bring the state further benefits from telecommunications deregulation and lower prices."
IU (http://www.indiana.edu) is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest and also is one of the largest universities in the United States, with more than 100,000 students, faculty and staff on eight campuses.
McLeodUSA (NASDAQ: MCLD) (http://www.mcleodusa.com) provides integrated communications services to business and residential customers in 12 Midwest and Rocky Mountain states, and has plans to expand its services into nine more. The company owns 27 switches, 9,400 route miles of fiber-optic network, and 616,400 local lines, and has 7,800 employees. In the next 12 months, McLeodUSA's publishing subsidiaries plan to distribute close to 24 million directories in 22 states, reaching nearly 40 million people.
(Christina Fitzpatrick, 317-278-1818, cfitzpat@iupui.edu)