iBasis Opens Network Operations Center in Hong Kong to Enhance Global Network Management, Scalability, Utilization

New Facility Increases Global Efficiency, Responsiveness As Company's Asian Traffic Grows More Than 380% in 2000

HONG KONG - March 6, 2001 - iBasis, Inc., (Nasdaq: IBAS), the leader in advanced Internet-based voice communications, today officially opened a second Network Operations Center (NOC) on its global network. The company's new facility in Hong Kong will provide additional global network and traffic management capabilities to support the company's rapidly growing global business. A mirror site of the first iBasis NOC, located at the company's US headquarters in Massachusetts, the Hong Kong NOC will help iBasis further scale its services and increase utilization on The iBasis Network, the global Internet telephony service infrastructure for many of the world's largest carriers.

In related news, iBasis today announced that Hutchison Corporate Access, a major Asian carrier serving the enterprise and carrier markets, has chosen iBasis for Internet telephony services. (See iBasis and Hutchison Corporate Access Sign Network Partnership - - March 6, 2001.)

International Data Corporation predicts that the worldwide market for VoIP services will grow from under $2 billion in 2000 to more than $17 billion in 2004. In the Asian-Pacific region alone, IDC expects revenues to reach $6.2 billion in 2006, up from approximately $7 million in 2000.

"We chose to locate our second network operations center in Hong Kong because of its importance as a major Asian communications hub and the availability of strong local talent. In addition, China is the largest traffic destination on our network and the largest traffic origination point for us outside of North America. We also fondly remember that Hong Kong was the first commercial route on the iBasis Network. As a result of important deals with several large Chinese carriers and other major regional carriers, year-over-year revenue from our Asian business more than tripled in 2000," said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis. "Importantly, in that same period we were also able to effect significant improvements in network utilization by generating a nearly ten-fold increase in Asia-originated traffic. Improving network utilization is key to our ability to expand our operating margins and accelerate our path to profitability. This significant increase in iBasis traffic to and from Asia, along with our continuing focus on enhancing network management and service quality, was central to our decision to open our second global network operations center in Hong Kong."

iBasis in Asia: Network Operations Center Enhances Global Efficiency, Caps Regional Success

The new Hong Kong facility augments the company's first NOC, located at the company's headquarters near Boston in the USA. With the addition of the Hong Kong NOC, iBasis will be able to more efficiently manage its global network operations and reduce its network engineering and staffing costs by transferring more of its traffic management and monitoring tasks to less costly daylight hour shifts. This increased operational efficiency will help enable iBasis to continue to scale its global VoIP capacity and deliver faster, more effective support services to its customers, without regard to time zone, culture or language. A mirror site of the company's U.S. NOC, the iBasis Hong Kong facility is professionally staffed 24X7 and features state-of-the-art network monitoring and management capabilities, including the company's proprietary Assured Quality Routing^TM (AQR^TM) technology which helps ensure Internet-based call quality indistinguishable from that of traditional phone service.

More than 100 service providers worldwide are iBasis' customers. In Asia alone, iBasis customers include four of the five largest carriers in China, including China Unicom, China Mobile, Jitong Communications, and China Netcom (CNC). Other regional customers include NTT, the Japanese carrier, Australia's Telstra, and The Communications Authority of Thailand.

About iBasis
Founded in 1996, iBasis (Nasdaq: IBAS) is the leader in advanced Internet-based voice communications. iBasis delivers toll quality international voice services and provides the infrastructure for hosted communications solutions, including unified communications and speech-enabled content, e-commerce and customer service applications. The company's customers include many of the largest enterprises and carriers in the world, including AT&T, Cable & Wireless, China Mobile, China Unicom, Concert, ExxonMobil, Gannett, H&R Block, Home Shopping Network, Morgan Stanley, NTT, Telstra, Sabre Group, Sprint, Western Union, WorldCom, and Verizon. iBasis' hosted, enhanced service solutions include SpeechPort^TM, a scalable, customizable platform for speech-enabled business solutions, VoCore^SM unified communications and the IP CallCardTM pre- and post-paid calling card platform. The iBasis Network is the world's largest international Cisco Powered Network for Internet Telephony and the first to receive the Unified Communications-Cisco Powered Network (UC-CPN) designation. iBasis is listed in both the Russell 2000® and Russell 3000® Indexes. The company can be reached at its worldwide headquarters in Burlington, Mass., USA at 781-505-7500 or on the Internet at www.ibasis.net .

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Assured Quality Routing and AQR are registered trademarks, VoCore is a service mark and iBasis, The iBasis Network, Internet Central Office, Internet Branch Office, IP CallCard, SpeechPort, IPort, and PriceInteractive are trademarks of iBasis, Inc. or its subsidiaries. Cisco and Cisco Powered Network are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners

Except for historical information, all of the expectations, projections and assumptions contained in the foregoing press release, including those relating to the company's current expectations regarding revenue growth, sources of revenue, margin improvement and future capital expenditures constitute forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, (i) the extent of adoption of the company's new voice-based Internet services and the timing and amount of revenue generated by these services; (ii) fluctuations in the market for and pricing of VoIP services; and (iii) the other considerations described as "Risk Factors" in iBasis' Annual Report on Form 10-K for its fiscal year ended December 31, 2000, and the company's other SEC filings.