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CORVALLIS, Ore. – TDS Telecommunications Corp. (TDS™), the Wisconsin-based telecommunications company providing communication services to customers in 30 states, has made a bandwidth donation to Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab worth more than $1.4 million, principals announced today.

The gift represents 600 megabits of bandwidth being provided over three years and allows the Open Source Lab (OSL) to operate two servers in domestic carrier neutral facilities supporting more than 7 million daily downloads of free, open source software. The bandwidth is equivalent to about two-thirds of OSU’s total current capacity for Internet access and will significantly strengthen the capabilities of the OSL, academia’s leading development center for open source software applications and initiatives.

TDS’s cumulative contributions to OSL now total nearly $3.4 million, lab principals confirm.

"TDS' historic commitment to the mission of our Open Source Lab has been transformative. Simply put, we would not be world leaders in open source without the bandwidth support of TDS," said OSU President Ed Ray. "This increased capacity makes it possible for us to continue to develop the world-class efforts for which OSL is so well known -- efforts like hosting Drupal, Apache or Mozilla's Firefox browser or being principal partners in the One Laptop Per Child Project. The educational opportunities that those projects provide for students are vast -- and singular to OSU. We are tremendously grateful, and look forward to working with TDS in the months and years to come."

The TDS gift is part of the Campaign for OSU, which to date has raised more than $500 million in scholarships and fellowships, endowment, new facilities for research and learning and more. The campaign was publicly launched in late 2007 with $350 million having already been raised toward an overall goal of $625 million.

About TDS: TDS Telecommunications Corp. markets communication services to business and residential customers in 30 states through its brands TDS Telecom® and TDS Metrocom®. With nearly 1.2 million access line equivalents in service, TDS Telecommunications Corp. connects customers to phone, broadband, and digital television service in hundreds of rural, suburban, and metropolitan communities. TDS  Visit www.tdstelecom.com  and www.tdsbusiness.com for more information. Telecommunications Corp. is the eighth-largest wire line company in the nation; employing approximately 2,730 people. The company is headquartered in Madison, Wis.