WASHINGTON, D.C. March 21, 2014 – Today, Cogent Communications Group, Inc. CEO Dave Schaeffer offered to resolve the impasse between Cogent and major telephone and cable companies (Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable) over upgrading the connections necessary to exchange Internet traffic, including streaming video traffic like Netflix, by paying the capital cost required for these companies to upgrade the connections (as well as Cogent's own costs) to ensure adequate capacity to deliver quality service to the customers of Cogent and these ISPs that have refused to upgrade traffic exchange capacity. Schaeffer said that for over a year customers of these ISPs have been suffering from the bottleneck imposed by these carriers.

"Cogent believes the traditional Internet model in which each party bears its own capital costs to upgrade an interconnection should be the model for these relationships but the reality of the gatekeeper power exercised by these telephone and cable companies requires that Cogent accept these additional costs in order to provide the highest quality Internet service possible," said Schaeffer.

To be clear, Cogent is not offering to enter into paid peering arrangements with these or any other networks. Rather, Cogent is simply willing, at this time, to incur the capital costs associated with augmenting its interconnections with these networks to address the current level of traffic congestion. Cogent believes that these major telephone and cable companies are attempting to leverage their monopoly on broadband residential Internet connections to increase their profits by imposing tolls on traffic requested by their customers and delivered by other Internet service providers.

Cogent believes that Title II classification is the optimal regulatory path to eliminate these tolls and preserve the open Internet. In the meantime, Cogent supports the FCC's effort to enforce and enhance the FCC's transparency rules and today submitted comments to the FCC in which Cogent offered concrete proposals that would advance the goals of the FCC's Open Internet Order. Cogent looks forward to continuing conversations with the FCC and the Internet community on these proposals and on the best ways to preserve a robust, innovative and truly open Internet.

About Cogent Communications

Cogent Communications (NASDAQ: CCOI) is a multinational, Tier 1 facilities-based ISP, consistently ranked as one of the top five Internet backbone networks in the world. Cogent specializes in providing businesses with high speed Internet access, Ethernet transport and colocation services. Cogent's facilities-based, all-optical IP network provides services in over 180 markets globally.

Since its inception, Cogent has unleashed the benefits of IP technology, building one of the largest and highest capacity IP networks in the world. This network enables Cogent to offer large bandwidth connections at highly competitive prices. Cogent also offers superior customer support by virtue of its end-to-end control of service delivery and network monitoring.

Cogent Communications is headquartered at 1015 31st Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20007. For more information, visit www.cogentco.com. Cogent Communications can be reached in the United States at (202) 295-4200 or via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Information in this release may involve expectations, beliefs, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to Cogent Communications Group, Inc. as of the date of the release, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement. The statements in this release are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations. Numerous factors could cause or contribute to such differences. Some of the factors and risks associated with our business are discussed in Cogent's registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in its other reports filed from time to time with the SEC.

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