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iBasis Reduces Cost of Calls to Central America for its Pingo® Prepaid Service Customers

RateWatcher™ Reduction Offers Significant Savings for Pingo Subscribers

BURLINGTON, MA— November 16, 2005 — Pingo (www.pingo.com), the prepaid calling card service of iBasis (OTCBB: IBAS), today announced new lower rates on calls to Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Calls to these destinations comprise more than 5% of all international calls from the U.S.

The reductions are the result of RateWatcher, a feature of Pingo that actively searches for opportunities to reduce costs and pass the savings along to Pingo phone card subscribers. RateWatcher is just one of the features that makes Pingo "the last calling card you'll ever need™". With RateWatcher, Pingo calling card customers benefit from the worldwide buying power of iBasis, one of the ten largest carriers of international telephone calls in the world.

By monitoring changing long distance costs around the world, RateWatcher finds opportunities to lower Pingo's costs, provide low international calling rates, and save Pingo subscribers from the chore of having to compare a multitude of prepaid calling card offerings. Previous RateWatcher reductions have included lower rates to many of the most popular calling destinations in Latin America and Asia, as well on calls to almost one billion mobile phones in 100 countries.

"We're very happy to be able to leverage our scale and efficiency to offer lower rates to our Pingo customers who call these Central American countries," said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis. "Pingo's combination of very competitive rates, great convenience features, and opportunities to earn bonus calling time make it a terrific deal. This RateWatcher reduction, our fifth in the past year, is aiming to increase the number of Pingo subscribers by attracting callers to countries in Central America, including Guatemala and El Salvador, two of the top 20 calling destinations from the U.S."

About Pingo

Pingo offers consumers high quality long distance service on a prepaid basis. Pingo customers save on calls to and from both landline and mobile phones. Mobile phone users in particular can save as much as 90% on international calls by using Pingo's toll-free access and lower rates on international calls. Minutes can be purchased using credit cards and debit cards at www.pingo.com. New customers begin saving immediately with a sign-up bonus of $5 worth of free calling and can receive additional $5 credits by successfully referring their friends to the Pingo service. Pingo can also be used to save on calls from 31 countries including, Canada, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Russia, and the U.K.

About iBasis

Founded in 1996, iBasis (OTCBB: IBAS) is a leading wholesale carrier of international long distance telephone calls and a provider of retail prepaid calling services, including the Pingo™ web-based offering (www.pingo.com) and disposable calling cards, which are sold through major distributors and available at retail stores throughout the U.S. iBasis customers include many of the largest telecommunications carriers in the world, including AT&T, Cable & Wireless, China Mobile, China Unicom, MCI, Sprint, Skype, and Telefonica. iBasis carried approximately 5 billion minutes of international voice over IP (VoIP) traffic in 2004, and is one of the ten largest carriers of international voice traffic in the world1. For four consecutive years service providers named iBasis the best international wholesale carrier in ATLANTIC-ACM's annual International Wholesale Carrier Report Card2. iBasis was also ranked among the fastest-growing technology companies in New England in the 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 Technology Fast 50 programs sponsored by Deloitte & Touche. The Company can be reached at its worldwide headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA at 781-505-7500 or on the Internet at www.ibasis.com.

   
 
 
     

 

 


1 Telegeography 2005 data compared with iBasis 2004 traffic volume.

2 ATLANTIC-ACM International Wholesale Carrier Report Card - 2002, 2003, 2004, & 2005.

iBasis and Pingo are registered marks, The iBasis Network and the last calling card you'll ever need are trademarks or servicemarks of iBasis, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Sweepstakes winners will be selected at random from all Pingo customers who have signed up, recharged their account, or otherwise entered the contest. No purchase is necessary. All referees must be new customers, and must activate their account by November 15th, 2005. For the Refer-a-Friend contest, all referrals must be made through Pingo's automated refer-a-friend system and logged through the system to be considered. There will be no exceptions. Only open to U.S. citizens over the age of 18 years. Void where prohibited. Complete rules and conditions are available on the Pingo website.

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 services and the timing and amount of revenue generated by these services; (ii) fluctuations in the market for and pricing of these services; and (iii) the other considerations described as "Risk Factors" in iBasis' most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q, and the company's other SEC filings. We have no current intention to update any forward-looking statements.

Use of Non-GAAP Financial Data
The Company provides certain financial data in addition to providing financial results in accordance with GAAP. This data is not in accordance with, or an alternative to GAAP, and may be different from Non-GAAP financial data used by other companies. This Non-GAAP financial data includes average revenue per minute, which the Company believes provides useful information, to both its management and investors about the Company's current performance.