Lantern Communications Appoints Douglas K. Jacobs as President and CEO.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 23, 2002

Lantern Communications today announced that Douglas Jacobs joins as President and CEO. Concurrent with Jacobs' joining Lantern, the current investors have committed up to $10 million additional funding to fortify Lantern's current successes with major customers trials.

Among Mr. Jacobs' diverse accomplishments include Senior Vice President and Area 8 President of Alcatel, where he oversaw a $4 billion operations of sales, service, strategic planning, internal and external communications for US, Canada, Mexico and Japan; Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Service for DSC communications, where he led DSC's expansion into the RBOC markets and grew revenues to an annual $1.4 billion level; Southwestern Regional Vice President of AT&T Network Systems, a $500 million-a-year operation; and many other similar positions. He also served as President and CEO of Convergence Communications, a broadband IP access service provider in Mexico, Central America and Venezuela, and Senior Vice President and COO of interWAVE Communications, a company operating in the GSM microcellular network business. Mr. Jacobs holds an MSIE in Operations Research from Purdue University, and a BSIE from Texas Tech University.

"The most significant opportunity in networking today is in the Metro Area Networks market, and Lantern has built the first operating carrier-grade 10 gigabit per second Resilient Packet Ring network switching system for this market, with economic performance superior to other solutions. Joining Lantern at this stage of its growth is very exciting. With its current strong partnerships and active customer trials, Lantern is ideally situated for expansion and diversification of its market base. The expansion-round financing is both a testimony to Lantern's strength and the confidence of our investors. We now will focus on expanding our infrastructure, providing stronger support to our partners in Asia, extending our global product branding, and opening additional markets in Europe," said Jacobs.

"Lantern has grown to the point where we need to manage a higher level of operating complexity, deeper strategic partnerships and product breadth. Doug brings to Lantern broad general management experience, extensive carrier experience and great customer and partner perspective -- just the right skills and knowledge," said Randy Strahan, a partner with Mohr Davidow and interim CEO of Lantern. "Doug's arrival, coupled with the additional financing, strengthen and expand our position with customers and partners, and enable us to accelerate the transition from a development-stage to a deployment-stage company."

About Lantern Communications

Lantern Communications is pioneering the application of Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) technology in carrier-class packet transport systems for metropolitan area networks. Lantern is also a leading contributor to the IEEE 802.17 RPR Working Group (www.ieee802.org/17). In addition, Lantern is a member of the Metro Ethernet Forum (www.metroethernetforum.org) and founding member of the RPR Alliance (www.rpralliance.org), an independent industry organization whose charter is to promote and articulate the benefits of RPR solutions.

For more information, please contact Lantern Communications, 211 River Oaks, and San Jose, CA 95134 [phone] or visit http://www.lanterncom.com.