Vectris Communications, a leading regional provider of Internet and data networking business solutions, is pulling Ohio and Wisconsin into the DSL service area while adding more cities in Kansas and Oklahoma. Vectris initiated its aggressive roll-out in April, taking its services to 92 cities in eight states. By year end, Arkansas and Michigan will be added to the customer base. The company is targeting secondary markets in the central US for its expansion, according to company officials.

Meanwhile, BroadJump Inc. is teaming with Cisco Systems Inc. for a new provisioning solution to automate DSL service and reduce the wait time from ordering through billing processes. BroadJump is a software solutions leader for the intelligent deployment of broadband services.BroadJump intends to integrate its Virtual Truck Installer to Cisco's Order-to-Service solution--a teaming designed to shave a wait of several weeks to a few days.

In yet another e-business collaboration, Austin-based Broadwing Communications has signed a three-year, $8.7-million contract with Center 7 Inc., a venture capital company of Novell founder Ray Noorda. This collaboration is aimed at providing dedicated, secure IP VPN services, collated web-hosting capabilities and 155-megabytes per second direct-line access.