Cisco first to receive BABT Full Quality Assurance approval for European telecommunications products.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 10, 1995--Cisco Systems is the first company in the United States whose American-made telecommunications products have received Full Quality Assurance approval from the British Approvals Board for Telecommunications (BABT) for the entire European Community.

BABT has awarded Cisco's development and manufacturing facilities in San Jose its Full Quality Assurance approval, recognizing the company's quality of production, design and testing operations. This certification allows Cisco to sell products with interfaces that connect to the European public telecommunications network in the European Community, without undertaking the lengthy process of certification through third-party test labs.

As a result, Cisco products will be available quickly in the 18 member countries of the European Economic Area, where deregulation and technology advances are causing strong demand for networking products.

"Using an outside test lab, this process can take anywhere from three months or more," said Stu Phillips, Cisco vice president of central engineering. "This certification means we can accelerate the delivery of products to our customers and at the same time avoid the additional costs of lab testing."

BABT's managing director, David Clarke, said, "We are delighted that Cisco is our first FQA issued in the U.S. FQA is an increasingly important key element of the approvals options offered by BABT and we are well advanced with several other companies. For our clients the advantages in FQA, particularly in reduced time to market for new and modified products, are considerable."

The San Jose facility will be reaudited every six months to ensure Cisco maintains the processes, procedures and controls that ensure the quality of design and production.

Cisco is one of only four firms in the world to have received FQA certification from BABT under Annex IV of the European telecom directive 91/263/EEC. The others are IBM France, GPT and Ascom.

"We are pleased to have had a continuous relationship with BABT over the past four years," Phillips added. "Cisco is committed to working on an ongoing basis with standards regulatory bodies to ensure that we meet international standards."

Cisco Systems, Inc. is the leading global supplier of enterprise networks, including routers, LAN and ATM switches, dial-up access servers and network management software. These products, integrated by the Cisco Internetwork Operating System (Cisco IOS(tm)) link geographically dispersed LANs, WANs and IBM networks. Cisco is headquartered in San Jose, and in the U.S. is traded under the NASDAQ symbol CSCO.

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Cisco Systems Ltd.

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BABT

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