Press Release

Hillsboro, Oregon—May 11, 2006—Wireless carriers are interested in migrating from leased line to IP or ATM backhaul to reduce backhaul costs and improve efficiency. Cell site backhaul costs are a major portion of wireless carrier's monthly operation expenses. Migrating to dynamic packet-based backhaul, such as IP, allows the carrier to more readily share cell site bandwidth between multiple radios and application types. The shared bandwidth and oversubscription nature of packet technology enables carriers to more efficiently converge cell site traffic and keep backhaul growth aligned with actual customer use.

The need to move to packet backhaul is being caused by the introduction of new and more bandwidth-intensive services, including faster email, web browsing, video casts, and picture sharing. These services require higher bandwidth to the user which translates to increased bandwidth requirements to each cell site. It is quite possible that bandwidth requirements to the cell site will more than double over the next 3 years to meet this demand.

Packet-based backhaul services represent significant savings potential for wireless carriers. Bandwidth efficiency of using traditional IP or ATM services and lower cost Ethernet services present additional savings opportunity both in cost of services and the efficiency of aggregating traffic before the switching center. Packet aggregation on a packet service may also represent significant cost reductions in equipment at the switching center. Instead of dedicated switching equipment ports for every cell site, packet-based switching equipment on a converged network should require less dedicated equipment.

Current cell sites and infrastructure utilize T1 leased lines, however. The number of cell sites and T1s per site is growing due to an increase in subscriber growth and new services requiring higher bandwidth. Carriers are purchasing substantial cell site access equipment today that supports T1 termination, TDM aggregation, and remote monitoring and diagnostics. The challenge is that carriers want to buy this equipment now and protect that investment when migrating to IP—all within a single product.

An ideal carrier solution would manage today's cell site aggregation needs of higher density leased lines and improved technician efficiency while utilizing this same product for migrating to IP in the future. The goal: significantly lower operational costs while improving cell site efficiency with one product. Kentrox®, a leading manufacturer of high-speed network access solutions, just announced the CrossPATH 4 for cell site aggregation. CrossPATH enables wireless carriers to aggregate and manage today's existing networks while providing migration options to future packet-based technologies. Find out more about the CrossPATH at www.kentrox.com/crosspath4.

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