ALOFI, Niue--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 7, 2003-- The Internet Users Society - Niue (IUS-N), today announced that it has launched free broadband Internet services for the local Internet community at its Internet Cafe on the tiny Polynesian island-nation of Niue. IUS-N, a US-incorporated, private charitable foundation locally managed in Niue, was established in 1997 to use revenue from registration of .NU domain names to develop and fund free Internet services for all the people of Niue.

"Deploying broadband at our free Internet Cafe has been wildly successful. The old analog dial-up system was quite slow and only able to handle two machines. The new broadband services means we can expand to six PCs," said Richard St Clair, Co-Founder Technical Manager, Internet Users Society - Niue and Chairman, Pacific Island Chapter ISOC. "The service is so quick it virtually eliminated having people wait in lines at the Internet Cafe which serves about 50-75 visitors per day, including doctors, consultants, tourists and high school students. Basically, everyone on the island who does not own a computer ends up here at one time or another."

IUS-N has also made substantial technical upgrades to its networking infrastructure, which has been providing free Internet services to all residents of Niue, via modem dial-up since 1997. These services are part of a package of benefits offered to Niue by IUS-N

The free broadband services are also being utilized by The Niue Chamber of Commerce Office and the Niue Business Advisory Service. IUS-N hopes to be able to establish broadband Internet services for government departments and schools soon.

In the meantime, IUS-N has substantially beefed up its network infrastructure, which provides the free Internet service to the island nation of Niue. Working with Niue Telecom, IUS-N has doubled the number of dial-in trunk lines into its satellite gateway to the Internet, increasing the number of dial-in ports to 24. It has also upgraded the gateway from an outdated hub based network to a switching based network, which now runs at 100Mbs. New Cisco IOS routers and Dell Systems servers have been installed and local Web hosting services have also been implemented for Niuean residents and businesses, including www.dive.nu , www.niuerentals.nu , www.niueisland.nu , www.cas.nu , and www.niuenews.nu . Tsunami state of the art Web acceleration servers have been installed to increase the performance of web traffic to the users.

IUS-N also sponsors the Niue tourism site www.niueisland.com and the government site www.gov.nu which are located overseas.

Significant upgrades to the email system include services that enable Niueans who are traveling to access their email using a browser-based Web mail interface. In order to protect Niuen users from hacking, intrusion, and systems damage, IUS-N has significantly increased security on all of its systems. Automatic anti-virus services have been installed and sophisticated anti-spam engines are now running on IUS-N's servers to help eradicate spam.

"The services provided to Niue by IUS-N have grown tremendously since initial deployment in 1997. The original email-only system started off with just two dial-up lines for some 30 users, with usage at under 30 hours per week of online user time," said St. Clair. "Currently the systems are running 4,800 hours per month in online time, with nearly 300 users, half private sector and half government, and in excess of 300 megabytes per day in Web traffic, with 20,000 plus email messages per week."

"Since we installed the full-time digital satellite Internet connection to Niue in 1999, we have logged 33,120 hours online. With only 8 hours of down time - mostly from the time the Niue power company replaced its transformers - we've maintained an uptime rate of 99.98%," continued St. Clair.

About The Internet Users Society - Niue

The Internet Users Society - Niue (IUS-N) was designated to administer the .NU top level domain (TLD), commonly known as the .NU Country Code TLD (ccTLD), by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), in early 1997. The IUS-N is a private, tax exempt charitable foundation, which was founded in 1997 by J. William Semich in the US and others in Niue with the aim of using .NU domain name registration fees to fund the high costs of satellite-based Internet connectivity in Niue.

About Niue

The island of Niue with a population of less than 2,000, is the world's smallest independent self-governed nation, and is a former dependency of New Zealand. Affectionately known as 'the rock,' Niue is reputedly the largest upraised coral atoll in the world. A single land mass in the center of a triangle of Polynesian islands, made up of Tonga, Western Samoa and the Cook Islands, Niue is located 2400 km north-east of New Zealand, on the eastern side of the International dateline, and is 11 hours behind Greenwich meantime. The island's isolation and coral makeup create a rugged coastline and reef which provide intimate swimming coves as opposed to the typical long stretches of sandy beaches so predominant elsewhere in Polynesia. As a result it is a whale-watchers', snorklers' and scuba divers' paradise. The landmass of Niue is 259 sq. km, and 13 villages are found along Niue's 67-km circle island road.

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Contact:

     MacSweeney PR
     Laura MacSweeney, 781/395-6420
        lmacsweeney@attbi.com

     or
     Internet Users Society - Niue
     J. William Semich, 508/359-5600
        bill@nic.nu