BellSouth Invests in Atrica, Joins Company's Board of Advisors.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 23, 2001

Atrica Inc., poised to be the leading provider of Optical Ethernet equipment for the $15 billion Metro networking market, today announced that it has received an investment from BellSouth Corp. (NYSE:BLS), one of the leading communications service providers in the United States, serving more than 44 million customers in the United States and 16 other countries. In addition, Douglas A. Bulleit, chief strategist at BellSouth, will join Atrica's advisory board.

The investment demonstrates the power of Atrica's vision of Optical Ethernet as an ideal foundation for the next generation of high-bandwidth, low-cost Metro networks.

"In this case, we were particularly struck by Atrica's innovative Optical Ethernet technology and its ability to improve carrier profitability, the company's strong management team and its impressive set of existing partners and investors," commented Bulleit. "For all these reasons, investing in Atrica and becoming a member of the company's advisory board made sense for us."

"BellSouth is the fifth incumbent carrier to invest in Atrica and we are, once again, excited to see that service providers around the world are recognizing the huge potential of Optical Ethernet," said Avinoam Rubinstain, founder and CEO of Atrica.

"More importantly, we're pleased that BellSouth has not only invested dollars, but has decided to be an active participant on our advisory board. Continuous input and feedback from members of the carrier community are critical to our success," Rubinstain added.

In February of this year, Atrica announced that four service providers -- Telia (via Telia Business Innovation); SBC Communications Inc. (via AurumSBC Ventures, an investment company whose shareholders are the Aurec Group and SBC Communications); France Telecom (via Innovacom); and Bezeq -- joined Atrica's existing investors to provide the company with a second round of financing of $18 million. Prior to this, Atrica received $16 million in a first round led by Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners and $4 million in seed funding from 3Com Corp.

In addition to BellSouth's Doug Bulleit, other members of Atrica's advisory board are: Dr. Fouad Tobagi, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University, and Jeffrey Feldman, CEO of Everest Broadband, an emerging building local exchange carrier (BLEC).

Atrica's mission is to deliver the most cost-effective, high-performance Optical Ethernet platforms to the forward-thinking service providers who are building next-generation Metro networks. Atrica is a privately held company based in Santa Clara, Calif., with R&D facilities in Israel and business development and sales offices in Paris.

The company received initial seed funding from 3Com Corp., a first round of financing led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital, and a second round led by four leading global service providers. For more information, visit Atrica on the Web at www.atrica.com.