Press Release

NEW YORK, May 15, 2002 (BUSINESS WIRE) --

Support Infrastructure Bring New Capabilities And Unprecedented Value To Enterprise And Carrier Customers

In pursuit of its goal to become the premier provider of high bandwidth transport services for the New York metropolitan area, Con Edison Communications (CEC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE: ED) today announced its unique customer support infrastructure. This effort is at the heart of CEC's mission to become the "smart alternative" for enterprise and carrier customers in the New York area, providing unparalleled operational efficiencies and increased business uptime.

Today's telecommunications services are fraught with customer service and support issues. Typical provisioning cycles run 120 to 180 days, impeding business initiatives and staff productivity. Network repairs can take hours or days. And for the most part, customers have no way to monitor services, manage networks or track problems leaving them completely blind and powerless.

Con Edison Communications customer support infrastructure is specifically designed to address these shortfalls and deliver customer-friendly solutions. The company has developed a fully-integrated, automated support system to keep track of network assets, rapidly isolate problems, accelerate field repair and provide self-service tools directly to customers. The support infrastructure is composed of:

    --  An integrated OSS for support process automation. Many
        carriers use stand-alone software tools to help them resolve
        technical problems or address customer requests. While these
        systems help in discrete areas, they fail to provide a `big
        picture' of what's happening, resulting in time consuming
        inefficiencies and poor service. CEC's fully integrated
        software for event monitoring, performance management, trouble
        ticketing and asset tracking gives the company a holistic view
        of its network resulting in more thorough information,
        automated problem isolation, and improved network
        availability.
    --  A one-of-a-kind visual mapping tool. CEC integrated its event
        management with a network map that provides visual
        representation of city blocks, buildings and even manholes and
        keeps track of every fiber strand, splice, piece of equipment
        and customer. When a problem occurs, CEC can quickly isolate
        the event down to the equipment, location, and closest street
        level access. This automated process means that field
        engineers are deployed to the exact city location closest to
        the problem area to greatly accelerate repairs and service
        restoration.
    --  Customer self-service. CEC will provide its customers with
        web-based tools enabling them to order services, view network
        performance, customize reports and track network problems.
        This on-line capability helps customers lower operating costs
        and plan capacity requirements.

"Our support infrastructure is proof positive of our commitment to customer service and care," states Peter Rust, president and CEO of Con Edison Communications. "Our customers will surely benefit from our support infrastructure through lower operating costs, better network availability and easier network management and capacity planning. We expect that these advantages will truly distinguish CEC from other carriers in the New York area."

About Con Edison Communications

Con Edison Communications, Inc. (CEC) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc. CEC, a carrier's carrier, offers a comprehensive range of value-added products and services designed to enhance the performance of its customers' networks. CEC provides managed data transport services, leased capacity services and plans to offer in-building optical distribution to multiple classes of customers including long-distance carriers, competitive local exchange carriers and Internet, cable, wireless and video companies. Additional information about CEC is available at http://www.electricfiber.com/.

About Consolidated Edison, Inc.

Consolidated Edison, Inc. [NYSE:ED] is one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, with approximately $10 billion in annual revenues and $17 billion in assets. The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through two regulated utility subsidiaries and four competitive energy and telecommunications businesses. For additional financial, operations and customer service information, visit the Consolidated Edison, Inc. web site at http://www.conedison.com/.

CONTACT: Con Edison Communications, Robert Jewels, 212.324.5030, PR@electricfiber.com, or
Weber Shandwick Worldwide, Scott Malinowski, 617.520.7034, smalinowski@webershandwick.com