M5 Networks Adds Over 600 Cisco Phone Users in June 2004

NEW YORK(BUSINESS WIRE)Aug. 3, 2004--M5 Networks, the Northeast’s leading provider of outsourced IP phone systems, today announced that it had added a record number of Cisco phone users to its customer list in June 2004. New customers included the Betty Cuningham Gallery, an art gallery in Manhattan that will be reopening in September, Interstate Financial Group, a full-service financial planning firm in Hartsdale, NY, and multiple office locations for InsPara Networking Technologies, an IT consulting firm headquartered in Cranford, NJ with a second office in Manhattan.

«Our existing customer base is clear evidence of our leadership position in this market and we’re aggressively pursuing additional customers to maintain our profitable growth, especially as some competing providers withdraw from the New York City market,» said Dan Hoffman, CEO and President of M5 Networks. «After working for four years to build a business model and infrastructure to handle the type of growth predicted by analysts for our market, we are pleased to see that the growth curve for this technology is significantly accelerating in New York’s small business market.»

During June 2004, M5 added 15 business customers and over 600 Cisco phone users, growing its customer base over 6 percent and number of seats served over 10 percent in just a single month. M5 started the second quarter providing its outsourced IP phone system to more than 200 small business customers and serving more than 5,000 seats in total. Even more significantly, the average customer size continues to trend upward, further demonstrating that adoption rates are growing in the upper portion of New York’s small business market.

Small to medium business enterprises (SMEs) are those businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Of the more than 64 million business lines currently in operation in the US, it is estimated that the SMEs account for more than 53 million business telephone lines. Analysts at In-Stat/MDR anticipate that SMEs and branch offices found in multi-tenant buildings are expected to contribute significantly to the future revenues of broadband service providers, especially those SMEs located in high-density areas, such as New York City.