A. Many hosting providers try hard to be all things to all customers. EarthLink recognizes that personal and business Web hosting needs require different approaches and support levels. Our focus is on delivering the best possible tools and support services for small and medium sized business customers. Most business customers expect premium service and support and are willing to pay it.

Online presence and e-commerce are essential in today's business environment. But many small and midsize business owners and managers don't have time or dedicated resources to keep up with ever changing new media approaches. That's why over the past several years we have developed easy to use, intuitive tools that help our customers better understand their businesses and be able to do more for less. These tools and how we make it easy for customers to do business with EarthLink are reasons why many esteem the EarthLink brand. This is also the major reason why EarthLink has been recognized with various user and editors' awards, such as the CNET Editor's Choice Award.

Another key area of differentiation is that we have successfully positioned EarthLink as a total communications provider offering business customers other related services they need. Among these are business high-speed access, remote VPN access for their remote or mobile workers, and value added services that will help their employees work faster and smarter. This also helps our customers eliminate the cost and complexity of maintaining separate relationships with multiple communications providers.

A. I think our customers probably are in a better position to answer this question. However, in four simple words I think they would say: reliability, support, and privacy. At the end of the day, for business customers, what matters most is that their site is secure, it stays up, and they always have access to customer and technical support when they need it. This represents real value for most businesses. Most persons will pay for excellent reliable service.

Over the years EarthLink has invested heavily to ensure network reliability and on developing tools that make it easy for customers to do more themselves. Among these are a customizable online control center, Trellix Site Builder, NetObjects Fusion Site Builder, and Urchin Site Statistics. We've also improved our own processes and systems to make it easy and more efficient for our people to meet our customers' changing business requirements. We plan to stay focused on continually improving tools, systems and processes that will help us clearly differentiate our offerings in the marketplace.

A. EarthLink is quite pleased with our success in this area. We also know that business needs change fast. We want to make sure we stay nimble and quick for attracting and retaining customers. I think this is key for any Web hosting provider's success. We plan to continue looking for new ways we can make it even simpler than ever for customers to do business with EarthLink so that they can do more of what they do best: Focus on their own business endeavors.