Acterna Announces New Broadcast Channel Manager; Industry Veteran Rob Shevlot Joins Company to Address Digital TV Growth Opportunity.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

GERMANTOWN, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 23, 2004

Acterna today announced it has named Rob Shevlot as the Broadcast Channel Manager for the company's Cable Networks Division. In this new role, Shevlot will strengthen Acterna's leadership in the digital video test sector by further leveraging its award-winning digital stream monitoring and analyzing capabilities in the fast-growing broadcast and video markets. Shevlot has more than 25 years of sales and marketing experience, meeting the testing and quality assurance needs of customers in the professional video, post-production, broadcast corporate, government, and aligned industries.

According to recent industry reports, digital television is poised for significant growth from a current worldwide penetration level of 7.7 percent. As demand grows, Acterna's expertise in the testing and monitoring of new data-centric services is critical to the successful deployment of these new services by its customers. Acterna's broadcast testing capabilities focus on the particular requirements for supporting digital television facilities, including the performance of stress tests and error monitoring as well as isolating problems, monitoring signal paths and identifying sources of noise and jitter.

"The addition of a dedicated broadcast channel manager of Rob Shevlot's caliber significantly enhances Acterna's ability to address the professional video and broadcast marketplace," said Dave Holly, president of Acterna's Cable Networks Division. "More than ever, today's digital video facilities need the right kind of MPEG monitoring and test equipment to ensure signal integrity. Rob is ideally suited to lead the delivery of our solutions in this market and to build on the momentum established by an award-winning DTS product line that is effectively addressing the growing trend of MPEG and digital signal analyses for both cable and broadcast service deployment."

Prior to joining Acterna, Shevlot served as national sales director for Enseo, a manufacturer of broadcast-quality MPEG-2 decoder products and MPEG-2 servers for retail, hospitality, cable local origination, and government markets. During his tenure at Enseo, Shevlot managed all Tier 1 OEMs and successfully established its products in the broadcast market by targeting high-end systems integrators and professional video dealers. As a result, he increased channel revenues by more than 20 percent. Some of his high-end, high-volume customers included AMC Movie Theaters and ONCommand Video.

About Acterna

Acterna is the world's largest provider of communications test solutions for telecommunications and cable network operators. A trusted communications test partner for more than eight decades, Acterna offers an unmatched portfolio of award-winning instruments, systems, software and services that help its customers reduce network costs while improving performance and reliability. Headquartered in Germantown, Maryland, USA - with European and Asia-Pacific operations based in Eningen, Germany and Hong Kong - Acterna serves nearly every major communications service provider and equipment manufacturer around the world through a skilled sales and support organization in 31 countries.