Cheetah Wireless Standardizes on Tropos for Residential and Small Business Wi-Fi Broadband Deployments; Plans to Cover Over 100 Square Miles of Las Vegas.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Tropos Networks, the leading supplier of equipment used to build metro-scale Wi-Fi mesh networks, today announced that, after carefully evaluating numerous outdoor Wi-Fi networking products, Cheetah Wireless Technologies, Inc. (CWTI) has standardized on Tropos equipment for use in its residential and small business wireless broadband ubiquitous coverage deployments. CWTI has already installed Tropos equipment in operational networks in Las Vegas, NV and Encinitas, CA and plans to expand the Las Vegas coverage area to over 100 square miles.

"After thorough evaluation of Tropos Networks and the alternatives, we have standardized on Tropos as our core 802.11 Wi-Fi technology," said Mitch Gonzalez, President and Founder of CWTI. "We will use Tropos technology in all of our metro-scale deployments that require access using standard 802.11 Wi-Fi clients. We chose the Tropos system because it provides the most cost effective throughput for large-scale geographies and because the omni-directional design is the easiest to install and expand. Moreover, we are thrilled with the way the Tropos system has operated in our evaluation and production networks."

CWTI is in the final stages of rolling out 30 Hotzones using Tropos equipment, with an additional 10 Hotzones per month planned in the metropolitan Las Vegas area. The company plans to increase its coverage area by installing additional Tropos mesh routers around the Hotzones, using the meshing characteristics of the Tropos equipment to expand their size to eventually cover over 100 square miles in and around Las Vegas.

The Encinitas network covers approximately one square mile, stretching several blocks on either side of Highway 101 from Encinitas Blvd. to K Street. It provides residential and small business broadband Internet access as well as mobile service throughout the area. The network provides user connections at speeds of 512 kbps and above.

"We are very pleased that CWTI chose to standardize on Tropos equipment and that Las Vegas and Encinitas are being unwired with Tropos," said Ron Sege, president and CEO of Tropos. "CWTI's selection of Tropos further validates our superior metro-scale Wi-Fi mesh networking equipment and adds to our tremendous market momentum."

The Encinitas and Las Vegas networks use Tropos Networks' outdoor-optimized and ruggedized Wi-Fi mesh routers. Tropos Wi-Fi mesh routers quickly and economically use the intelligent Tropos Predictive Wireless Routing Protocol (PWRP(TM)) to provide pervasive coverage over metro areas. PWRP forms a wireless mesh, dynamically routing traffic along the highest throughput path to a wired gateway. This intelligent routing negates effects of radio frequency (RF) interference, wired backhaul failure and node failure. PWRP scales to thousands of nodes with the lowest routing overhead in the industry. Network support costs are minimized via the central management capabilities of the Tropos Control element manager, a configuration, monitoring and maintenance tool.

About Tropos Networks, Inc.

With more than 125 installed customers, Tropos Networks, Inc. is the leading supplier of systems used to build metro-scale Wi-Fi mesh networks. Tropos' unique Wi-Fi cells, along with the first element manager to control large Wi-Fi networks, enable public agencies and service providers to deliver ubiquitous, city-wide mobile broadband to users in any locale. These carrier-class IP networks are low cost and easy to install and scale. The Tropos cellular mesh architecture and use of optimized open-standard radios dramatically reduce the need for wired backhaul while eliminating expensive proprietary clients and complex software. Using the patented Predictive Wireless Routing Protocol, Tropos solutions deliver maximum bandwidth to the user regardless of conditions, at unprecedented Wi-Fi network scale. Tropos Networks is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, please visit www.tropos.com, call 408-331-6800 or write to [e-mail].

Tropos Networks, Tropos and PWRP are trademarks of Tropos Networks, Inc. All other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holder(s).