The upgrades represent the second phase of MCI's Internet 2000 program. Newsbytes covered the announcement last March, which entailed MCI's plans for its Internet business plan.

It seems the telco's network needs the speed increase -- officials said traffic on the company's Internet network has increased by more than 5600 percent since its inception less than two years ago. Also, more than 250 trillion bytes of data run over MCI's backbone each month, which is the equivalent of nearly nine million sets of encyclopedias or 300,000 full-length motion pictures, officials said. The company is also adding 13,000 data ports, or high-speed on-ramps to connect to the Internet vis special dedicated access.

Fred Briggs, MCI's chief engineering officer, called the upgrades "aggressive," and said that they will "enable us to provide optimum service to our customers today while positioning MCI as the Internet provider for the future."

With the increase to 622 Mbps, customers can "expect to encounter virtually no Internet delays due to network congestion," officials said, "and requests for new Internet service can be processed more quickly with the deployment of new ports. We expect that the time it takes to provision Internet service" for high-end customers to be cut from 45 to 22 days.

On March 18, MCI announced its Internet 2000 plan, a launch covered by Newsbytes. At the time, an MCI spokesperson said it was going to increase its backbone from 45 Mbps to 155 Mbps, which would "ease a lot of the traffic jams out there."

MCI also offered Internet access to consumers at $19.95 per month for unlimited access, which Newsbytes notes is similar to AT&T's WorldNet Service. "We're going to be competitive with them (AT&T) in all of these markets," an MCI spokesperson said at the time.

In addition, MCI said it would expand its local dial-up Internet service to 250 cities by this summer, and to 300 cities by the end of this year. Officials also said the company will offer highspeed integrated services digital network (ISDN) access by this summer -- a goal already reached, Newsbytes notes.

(Bob Woods/19960624/Press Contacts: Leslie Aun or Jim Collins, MCI, 800-719-3456)