Saturday January 6th 2001, Auckland

i4free advises that its revenue-sharing interconnect arrangements with Clear have been terminated with effect from 31 December 2000.

In a surprise move, Clear advised just before Christmas that i4free could not rely on the continued revenue-sharing arrangement that had been planned by Clear's wholesale division as a replacement for the existing agreement which expires on 31 December 2000.

"We are very disappointed that after months of planning this with Clear, they would pull the plug with no warning, after secret discussions with Telecom that we were not party to" says i4free CEO Annette Presley.

"The government's recent decision on telecommunications reform validates our right to a share of the costs that Telecom saves by using our network. This deal between the large Carriers flies in the face of this." continued Presley.

i4free still believes all New Zealanders should have free Internet access as of right. "While we cannot afford to continue to run an open-ended free service we will continue to run i4free with a smaller pool of access modems, and the i4free email addresses will be available through any other ISP".

i4free's sister company Attica Communications today launched an industry-leading premium ISP service called Slingshot.co.nz which offers very high quality unlimited Internet access for only $14.95 per month. i4free is recommending to its existing users that they sign up to the Slingshot service, which aims to never have a busy signal and offers a reliability guarantee.

"We want to ensure our 140,000 users can still get the best available options either with i4free or through Slingshot.co.nz" says Presley.

Slingshot.co.nz will provide unlimited access, free home page hosting and up to seven free e-mail addresses and mailboxes for $14.95 per month. By over-provisioning modem pools and constantly monitoring all aspects of the service, Slingshot.co.nz expects that it should be able to ensure that users will never get a busy signal. The service has been engineered with the goal of providing the country's most reliable ISP service. Slingshot.co.nz will lead the industry by guaranteeing that e-mail downtime will be less than 60 minutes per quarter. It will also move to high performance Southern Cross international capacity to further improve international transfer rates - all for $10 per month less than the other large ISPs offer.

i4free users upgrading to Slingshot.co.nz will still be able to use their i4free e-mail addresses if they wish or can have e-mail to their i4free mailboxes automatically forwarded to their new Slingshot.co.nz e-mail address.