ConnectSouth Expands Internet Business Tools Offering. New Product Suite Enhances Value of the Internet to Small and Medium Size Companies.

ConnectSouth, a leading provider of high-speed connectivity and Internet business tools, announced today the expansion of its high-end Internet services for small and medium-sized businesses with three new products. The new products include a user friendly solution for building, launching and maintaining an informational or e-commerce enabled Web site, an online backup and recovery product that will secure data over a DSL connection and store it in a secure off-site data center and an e-procurement marketplace service that helps businesses reduce the cost of purchasing office equipment, supplies and technology.

The first new offering from ConnectSouth is eSiteNow, a feature of ConnectSouth's Web hosting service. With eSiteNow businesses will be able to build a professional Web site and expand their e-commerce capabilities on the Web, without having extensive technical experience. eSiteNow features a simple menu system that prompts users with a series of basic questions about their business and the appearance and functionality of the site. eSiteNow then generates a professional Web site based on the responses and removes the need for traditional Web site coding. ConnectSouth will provide expert e-business advice on securing a domain name, building a Web site using eSiteNow, and adding e-commerce capabilities including a shopping cart, catalog and secure credit card transactions. eSiteNow can be purchased as a part of any of ConnectSouth's Web Hosting or E-commerce packages.

ConnectSouth clients have welcomed the new offering with enthusiasm. "As a restaurant owner focused on the bottom-line, I knew that a Web presence could help me expand my business," stated Ed Moghini, owner of Aldino Cucina Italia, an Italian restaurant chain based in San Antonio. "With eSiteNow, I was not only able to create my own site, I am building sites for my other restaurants and am excited about the possibility of selling my own specialty food items and menus on line."

ConnectSouth's second new offering is the ConnectSouth LiveVault Online Back-up and Recovery service. This service allows a business to back-up their critical server data over their high-speed Internet connection in a timely and secure manner without hiring additional information technology (IT) staff or learning difficult technology. According to a recent Forrester Research Report, ConnectSouth's newest offering is a service that many small and medium-sized businesses are desperately in need of. The report shows that 85% of data critical to running small and medium-sized businesses currently resides on the servers of the company's owners and employees. Should technical problems occur or computers be stolen or damaged, that data is lost. In addition to the back-up features of the new product, the service also reduces the difficulty of transferring data from old equipment to new PCs as a company upgrades as well as providing data protection for Windows NT servers. The new offering will allow ConnectSouth to provide Windows 2000 support the first of 2001.

ConnectSouth's final new offering comes via a partnership with industry leader, Works.com to create an online "Marketplace" product that provides an e-procurement service to reduce the cost of purchasing office equipment, supplies and technology. The ConnectSouth and Works.com marketplace includes more than 100,000 products from more than 1,600 manufacturers with prices that are typically 15-20% lower than standard industry pricing. By using this marketplace, businesses can streamline the purchasing process by eliminating such time consuming tasks as organizing paperwork, tracking down managers to approve orders, tracking order status, calculating up-to-date spending information and maintaining communication with numerous suppliers. The Aberdeen Group estimates, businesses spend more than $250 billion per year to manually process procurement documents, with the average costs to the company at $107 to manually process a $27 order for office products. The ConnectSouth solution can significantly reduce those costs for businesses.

ConnectSouth's latest offering of eSiteNow, LiveVault Online Storage and Backup Recovery systems and the Works.com "Marketplace" solution are further examples of how ConnectSouth is empowering companies to save money and increase sales via the Internet. By providing high-speed connectivity and Internet business applications, ConnectSouth is bringing the power of the Web to businesses throughout the Southeastern region of the United States.

ConnectSouth Communications, Inc., headquartered in Austin, Texas, is an "e-enabler," providing a full range of high-speed connectivity and Internet business application tools for small and medium-sized businesses in the Southern Region of the United States. For more information, visit ConnectSouth's website (www.connectsouth.com), or call 1-877-309-5557.