ALOHA Networks Founder Receives European Technology Award.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 21, 2000

The Eduard Rhein Foundation has announced that its year 2000 technology award will be presented to Dr. Norman Abramson, founder and President of San Francisco based ALOHA Networks, Inc. Abramson will be honored for the invention of the ALOHA and Spread ALOHA two-way wireless communication protocols at ceremonies to take place in Munich in October. A 100,000-DM honorarium accompanies the award. Previous recipients of the Rhein Technology Award include Ray Dolby (inventor of Dolby sound), Vladimir Zworykin (originator of modern TV), Qualcomm founder Andrew Viterbi (who brought CDMA technology to the commercial marketplace), Tim Berners-Lee (originator of the Worldwide Web) and other communication pioneers.

Abramson's original ALOHA technology, developed in the 1970's, forms the basis of Ethernet technology. ALOHA is also utilized in virtually all two-way wireless communication systems in use today. The company's new Spread ALOHA Multiple Access (SAMA) technology is being developed as the enabling tool for broadband two-way wireless communications for many applications including cost-effective, two-way satellite Internet access.

Spread ALOHA was developed with the support of U.S. government Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards to ALOHA Networks from the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and from the National Science Foundation. SkyDSL, ALOHA Network's first SAMA based product, allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to extend service to thousands of geographically dispersed subscribers using a simple VSAT employing a less-than-one-meter dish. The use of SAMA in SkyDSL can lower the cost of the satellite resources needed to support a single user by a factor of 10 to 100. By deploying a single SkyDSL gateway station, ISPs can serve thousands of small to medium sized enterprises with high-speed, asymmetric connections directly to the Internet backbone. SkyDSL systems will be alpha tested in the first quarter of 2001 and will be available to ISPs and satellite system and telecommunication carriers several months later.

In 1998 Dr. Abramson was presented with the IEEE Information Theory Society Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation for "the invention of the first random-access communication protocol." In 1995, Dr. Abramson received the IEEE 1995 Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award for "development of the concept of the ALOHA System which led to modern local area networks."

Prior to founding ALOHA Networks, Dr. Abramson was Professor of Electrical Engineering, Professor of Information and Computer Science and Director of The ALOHA System at the University of Hawaii. He directed the construction and operation of the ALOHANET, the first modern data network, which operated throughout the state of Hawaii in the early 1970's and demonstrated the first packet radio sensors, the first packet radio repeaters, the first satellite packet network and the first satellite access to the Internet.