Agility Communications Expands Into Silicon Valley With San Jose Product Development Facility.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 13, 2002

Tunable Laser Leader Acquires Top Optical-Engineering Talent;

Establishes Bay Area Facility for Future Product Development

Agility Communications, Inc., the award-winning leader of widely tunable lasers for metro, switching, and long-haul markets, announced today that it has expanded into the Silicon Valley area with a new product development facility based in San Jose. As part of its expansion, the company has acquired talent with experience in RF and digital electronics, firmware and optical system design. The new facility will be run by Rang-Chen Yu, former director of optical engineering with Cinta Networks. This new facility and team, in conjunction with the existing Agility team, is tasked with developing the next generation of tunable sub-system solutions.

As director of optical engineering for Cinta Networks, Yu was responsible for optical technology, hardware and system engineering for a dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) transport and the optical core switch platform. Yu has also held senior engineering and managerial posts with Bandwidth9 and SDL Inc. (now part of JDSU). Yu received his Ph.D. in solid-state physics from the University of Pennsylvania and has conducted research at Princeton University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds five U.S. patents for high-speed laser and tunable laser technology inventions.

"Establishing a presence in the technology-rich Silicon Valley is key to our long-term strategy," said Ron Nelson, president and CEO for Agility Communications, Inc. "Many of our customers are based in this region, and it's important to work closely with them on new product development. We're thrilled to have acquired such a strong technical team, led by Rang-Chen, who is well respected in the industry. With our corporate headquarters in Santa Barbara; manufacturing facilities in Pennsylvania; sales and support facilities in Manchester, England; distribution partners in Japan; and now our San Jose facility, we further solidify our position in the market as the leader of widely tunable lasers, ready to support customers worldwide."

Agility is pioneering breakthrough optical networking infrastructure solutions that dramatically reduce the costs and complexity of supporting agile networks. Developed for DWDM networks, Agility's high-powered widely tunable lasers provide communications companies with far greater bandwidth flexibility than is currently available with fixed-wavelength or narrowly tunable lasers. Agility's lasers help communications providers increase network capacity, maximize existing network resources, streamline the planning process for network growth, and deliver bandwidth on demand through simple point-and-click provisioning.

The new Agility San Jose lab will be housed in a state-of-the-art facility in the center of Silicon Valley's technology sector, at 2033 Gateway Place.

About Agility Communications, Inc.

Agility Communications, Inc., the leader in pioneering widely tunable lasers for metro, switching, and long-haul markets, is providing the lowest total cost of ownership and dramatically reducing the costs and complexity of supporting agile networks. The company has been named one of Light Reading's Top 10 Privately Held Companies, has won the Technologic Partners' Optix 2001 Investors' Choice award, and was listed in UPSIDE Magazine's "Hot 100" private companies for 2001. Agility has also been highlighted in several "Hot Companies to Watch" lists, including ones in Business Week and Lightwave Magazine.

Founded by a team of optical networking and semiconductor veterans in Oct. 1998, Agility is headquartered in Santa Barbara, Calif., and has manufacturing facilities in Allentown, Penn. Agility investors include Alliance, Amerindo Investment Advisors, CIENA Corp., Comdisco Ventures, Dell Ventures, General Bank, GM Investment Management Corp., Global Strategic, Granite Global Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Mitsubishi International Corp., Morgenthaler Ventures, Mustang Ventures, Nissho Electronics Corp., Nissho Iwai American Corp., Tellabs, U.S. Venture Partners, and Worldview Technology Partners. For more information about Agility solutions, visit www.agility.com, send email to [e-mail], or call 805/690-1700.

Note to Editors: Agility Communications and the Agility logo are trademarks of Agility Communications, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.