Tampa Electric Chooses MIR3 inAlertCenter for Emergency and Business Continuity Communications

TECO Energy’s Electric and Gas Subsidiaries Throughout Florida Benefit from Coordinated, Streamlined Two-Way Notification Services from MIR3

San Diego, California --[EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION NEWS]-- December 6, 2005 – MIR3™, the technology leader in Intelligent NotificationTM solutions, today announced that Tampa Electric, a subsidiary of TECO Energy, Inc., has contracted with MIR3 to provide Intelligent Notification services. MIR3’s Intelligent Notification solutions and services enable designated individuals to send high-speed emergency communications to and from any device, such as landline, satellite and mobile phones, email, pagers, SMS, PDAs and fax, to individual recipients, groups or organization-wide with the click of a mouse.

Tampa Electric will utilize MIR3’s inAlertCenter to communicate internally with the Utilities’ more than 3,500 employees about weather-related emergencies, disasters and business continuity issues, such as IT-related outages. Designed for ease-of-use, MIR3’s inAlertCenter intuitive interface is simple to manage by non-technical personnel. It allows contact information to be easily updated and managed by anyone.

“The fact that inAlertCenter is extremely easy to use and records the success of calls sent and received was very important to us when choosing a notification system,” said Sue Connell, the Emergency Management Coordinator at Tampa Electric. “With the series of severe hurricanes we’ve had recently, it was imperative that we have a notification system in place in order to quickly communicate between departments and in order to speed hurricane restoration efforts.”

inAlertCenter features call bridging into call centers and conference calls; find/follow recipients based on their device priority and calendar schedule; complete 128-bit SSL security encryption and authentication; recorded voice or text-to-speech options; detailed reporting and metrics to determine the delivery success of outbound notifications and cascading of new notifications by recipients.

Tampa Electric joins a growing list of public sector and private organizations, such as the City of Miami, South Mississippi Electric, ImpactWeather and the Calcasieu Police Jury in Louisiana that already utilize MIR3’s Intelligent Notification for high-priority communications, emergency preparedness, business continuity and disaster recovery purposes.

“Tampa Electric is one of the many organizations that we were able to help prepare for the onslaught of hurricanes they experienced in the Southeast – both this year and last,” said Margi Schmidt, Senior Vice President of Business Development at MIR3. “We are pleased to help Tampa Electric get inAlertCenter up and running quickly with systematic, automated SAP database updates in order to make communicating company-wide before and during emergencies more efficient and much more manageable for its staff.”

About TECO Energy, Inc.
TECO Energy, Inc. (NYSE: TE) is an integrated energy-related holding company with regulated utility businesses, complemented by a family of unregulated businesses. Its principal subsidiary, Tampa Electric Company, is a regulated utility with both electric and gas divisions (Tampa Electric and Peoples Gas System). Other subsidiaries are engaged in waterborne transportation, coal and synthetic fuel production and electric generation and distribution in Guatemala.