Optical Startup Big Bear Networks Names Ex-Tyco VP Mark Thompson as CEO.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 6, 2001

Company's 'Photronic Signal Processing' Solutions Will

Bring Profitable Service Delivery to Next-Generation

Carrier Equipment

Big Bear Networks, an optical networking startup whose products will help communication system vendors build more effective and profitable service delivery into their next-generation carrier equipment, has named Mark Thompson president and chief executive officer.

Thompson joins Big Bear Networks after two years as vice president and general manager of Tyco Electronics Corporation's Power Components Division. As Big Bear's first CEO he will spearhead development of the company's 10- and 40-gigabit-per-second electro-optical module and subassembly products in the emerging technology area of "photronic signal processing."

Big Bear was founded in June 2000, with its initial core team of engineers coming from Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks and Texas Instruments. The company raised $20 million in its initial round of private funding from Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital. A second round of financing is expected to close this fall.

Accel Partners' Bill Lanfri had served as interim CEO for Big Bear until Thompson's recent appointment.

New Interface Challenges at 10- and 40-Gigabit Speeds

Big Bear is developing technology aimed at removing the physical-layer constraints associated with tapping into and maximizing the bandwidth-transmission capabilities of fiber- optic media. The company's products will tightly couple previously separate electrical and photonic functions to provide active monitoring and dynamic compensation of the optical data path. The innovative application of advanced digital signal processing (DSP) and conditioning techniques to high-speed optical communication will yield significant performance and cost benefits in high-speed (10-40Gbps and beyond) network applications ranging from short-reach cross-office to multi-wavelength long-haul optical transport. Target customers are system vendors supplying the fundamental switching and transmission infrastructure for the public network: optical switches, DWDM-based SONET/SDH grooming switches, terabit-class IP/MPLS routers and SONET multiplexing and transmission equipment.

"At 40G the landscape changes significantly," said Thompson. "At these speeds it becomes far more difficult to compensate for fiber impairments and preserve the integrity of the data over longer distances. Switching system vendors already know they need more integrated and adaptive solutions to address these problems in a cost-effective manner. While earlier 2.5-gigabit solutions could be successfully designed as collections of distinct optical and electrical parts, it is critical that higher-speed optical interfaces be conceived as integrated systems, with an eye to the complex interactions between electronics, photonics and -- not least -- subsystem-level packaging.

"Big Bear's technical team recognized these issues early on and over the past year has already made a great deal of progress toward addressing them," Thompson added. "I am pleased to be joining the company at a time when our technology is poised to make a real difference in the emerging high-speed optical communications market."

Big Bear CEO Mark Thompson: Professional Background

Thompson previously ran Tyco Electronics' Power Components Division, which he restructured as an independent operating unit when Tyco acquired Raychem Electronics in 1999. Prior to the acquisition he had spent 14 years with Raychem. Most recently he was vice president of Raychem's OEM Group; previously he had served as technical director of the company's PolySwitch Division, and had also held technical management positions with Raychem Corporate Technology. He began his career as a research scientist with Shell Development Company. A resident of San Carlos, Calif., Thompson, 44, holds a Ph.D. degree in inorganic chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in chemistry from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Big Bear Networks Management Team, Board of Directors

Founders of Big Bear Networks are Dr. Laura Adams, chief technical officer for photonics; Dr. John Paul Mattia, chief technical officer for electronics; and Maurice Tarsia, director of electronic design. Adams was previously director of optical data systems at Lucent Technologies, where she worked on both metropolitan and long-haul optical products. While earning her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she worked in 40-Gbps optical communications at MIT Lincoln Laboratory; she holds nine patents. Mattia was previously at Texas Instruments, where he worked in conjunction with the DSP R&D center; and at Lucent, where he designed and implemented ultra-high-speed lightwave circuits. Before and while earning his Ph.D. at MIT, Mattia worked for 10 years at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory; he holds three patents. Tarsia comes to Big Bear from Lucent's Silicon Circuits research department, where he developed advanced CMOS circuits; earlier, he had been with Texas Instruments' DSP R&D mixed-signal research branch; he holds six patents.

The company's management team also includes Ramin Shirani, vice president of engineering; David Horn, vice president of product integration and operations; and John Jaeger, vice president of marketing. Shirani was general manager for Lucent's physical-layer (10/40-Gbps) group following the company's acquisition of Enable Semiconductor; before joining Enable, he worked at National Semiconductor on Ethernet physical-layer devices. Horn joined Big Bear from Harmonic Lightwave, where he was vice president of operations for broadband access networks; he had previously held positions at SDL and XMR. Jaeger served as director of the multi-LAN switching group at Bay Networks prior to founding StratumOne Communications, which developed SONET devices; he had previously been marketing manager at AMD.

Big Bear's board of directors includes Mark Thompson; Laura Adams; Ron Schmidt, former chief technical officer of Bay Networks; and James Goetz, a partner with Accel Partners.

Big Bear Networks is located at 1591 McCarthy Blvd., Milpitas, Calif. 95035. The company currently has 75 employees. For more information, call 408/434-3400 or visit the Big Bear Networks web site at www.bigbearnetworks.com.