Advanced Product Development and Information Technology

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Leading communications product development firm to license advanced SONET/SDH technology to speed product development in new markets for telecommunications, data communications and CATV industries

Newton, Mass., January 27, 1998 — Kalman Saffran Associates (KSA), a leading developer of state-of-the-art products for the data communications, telecommunications and interactive/CATV industries, today announced that it will license its innovative SONET/SDH technology to companies manufacturing communications products.

Already the standard for encapsulating and transporting data for telecommunications carrier products, SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) and its international counterpart SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) have been adopted by Internet service providers (ISPs) and the cable industry. Equipment manufacturers for the data communications and CATV industries are increasingly being required by customers to deliver SONET/SDH-compatible products. Because SONET/SDH are extremely complex technologies, these companies are turning to KSA for help in delivering SONET/SDH products to market quickly.

“KSA first began developing SONET/SDH products 12 years ago for telephone equipment manufacturers like AT&T Bell Laboratories, Northern Telecom and Alcatel. Now companies across the entire communications industry — from Cisco to Scientific Atlanta — need to plug into the public switched telephone network and they need SONET/SDH to do it,” said Kalman Saffran, president and founder of KSA. “By capitalizing on KSA’s vast expertise with SONET/SDH products, these companies can serve new customers without having to invest years in development of this very complex technology.” Applications emerging from the convergence of telephony and data communications, such as video-on-demand, distance learning, video teleconferencing and other applications with high bandwidth requirements, coupled with the explosive growth of the Internet and World Wide Web, have created an unprecedented demand for affordable higher bandwidth among ISPs, local and long-distance telephone companies, cable multi-system operators (MSOs), as well as Fortune 500 companies. This convergence makes multi-vendor interoperability, or standardization, on an end-to-end basis mandatory. The worldwide SONET/SDH network provides the ubiquitous standard for high bandwidth (speeds up to 10 Gbps) voice and data transmission. KSA has extensive experience in these technologies dating back to the establishment of SONET/SDH as an industry standard.

KSA will license its SONET/SDH technology, which includes proprietary circuitry and firmware. Custom product development and system engineering services can also be provided. In the past, KSA has developed ASICs, board-level electronics, firmware and/or management systems for products operating at every SONET/SDH rate from OC-1 (52 Mbps) through OC-192 (10 Gbps).

Availability and Licensing KSA’s SONET/SDH technology licenses are available immediately.For more information: Contact Us. All inquiries will be held in strict confidence.

About Kalman Saffran Associates - Established in 1978, Kalman Saffran Associates (KSA) is a leading OEM product development firm that rapidly creates innovative products for premier companies in the data communications, telecommunications and interactive/CATV industries. To ensure success, KSA applies a proven, advanced engineering methodology to all projects. KSA has a staff of more than 100, including engineers specializing in today’s “building block” technologies such as SONET/SDH, ATM, xDSL, fiber optics, MPEG and PCI. KSA has designed a CompactPCI hot swap solution and is licensing that solution to communications companies looking to bring hot swap capable products to market quickly. KSA’s clients include industry leaders such as AT&T, Lucent, Nortel, Cisco Systems, 3COM, Scientific-Atlanta, PictureTel, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq and Motorola, among many others. For further information, visit KSA on the World Wide Web at http://www.ksa1.com.

We will be pleased to assist your product development efforts. For more information: Contact Us