TollBridge Technologies Establishes Sales and Marketing Operations in Europe; Company Establishes Regional Presence to Support Growing Base of Customers.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

COPENHAGEN, Denmark--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 31, 2000

U.S.-based TollBridge Technologies, the market-share leading vendor of carrier-class VoDSL solutions for broadband networks, announced today that it has established its regional headquarters for Europe in the greater London, England area, beginning with sales and technical support capabilities. Key appointments in this organization will be announced in the coming weeks.

"The markets of Europe represent one of the best growth opportunities for voice over broadband networks, as broadband networks based on Digital Subscriber Line and Cable TV technology are being rapidly deployed in this region," commented James Grady, vice president, international for TollBridge Technologies. "The future of communications lies in packet-based, bundled services over broadband infrastructures, and TollBridge Technologies is in a unique position to enable carriers to address the needs of consumers and businesses alike."

TollBridge Technologies is the leading developer of high-quality voice-over-broadband solutions for a new generation of Broadband networks. TollBridge has successfully deployed carrier-class solutions to accelerate its market share leadership in this industry, despite the recent entry of several competitors into this market.

"TollBridge was the first to market with a carrier class voice over DSL gateway," said Jeremy Duke, founder and president of Synergy Research Group. "They faced increasing competition in 2000, particularly in the second quarter, but the overall market is growing rapidly as well. TollBridge has a strong product, and they have retained their leadership by aggressively signing up new partners and customers."

As part of the launch, TollBridge is announcing deliver of the first carrier-class Voice Gateway in Europe, using the V5.2 protocol for interfacing with Class 5 switches and with CE Mark and TUV GS Mark certification. Interoperability testing has been completed between the switches of Alcatel, Lucent and Nortel Networks and the TollBridge gateway. Known as the TB200, it is the industry-leading platform that delivers telephony services over broadband networks, such as Cable TV, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and broadband wireless access networks. TollBridge is the first in the industry to offer a carrier-class solution in this region.

In Europe, the relations between the incumbents and emerging carriers are changing to allow competitive alternatives to the incumbent PTTs. Cable TV service providers, for example, have access to 60% of the households in Europe, which will give them the opportunity to provide a bundle of enhanced services to consumers. Layering packetized voice above the physical networking medium will enable the migration of existing services to all broadband networks and accelerate the evolution of enhanced services, realizing the vision of the new public network.

"The TB200 solution enables service providers to offer voice communications over any broadband medium. Tollbridge has had the largest installed base in North America of over 40,000 paying customers. This knowledge helped us to develop a viable V5.2 version for global markets, which will allow our customers to deploy faster and offer a wider variety of voice and data services," said Grady.

About TollBridge Gateway Solutions

TollBridge's TB200 carrier-grade Local Exchange Gateway allows carriers to integrate packet-based voice traffic from cable, xDSL, or wireless systems into the public switched telephone network via Class 5 switches. The TB200 uses the industry standard GR-303 and V5.2 protocols to ensure compatibility with Class 5 switches, and also supports emerging protocols such as the Segment Interface Protocol (SIP) and the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP).

The TollView(TM) Management Suite is an element management system that includes a graphical interface for simple end-to-end configuration, troubleshooting, and performance management of up to 100 TB200 systems via HP OpenView(TM) on Sun Solaris(TM) platforms.

About TollBridge Technologies

Founded in March 1998 and located in Santa Clara, Calif., TollBridge Technologies is the leading provider of high-quality voice-over-broadband solutions to the new generation of carriers. The company was selected as one of UPSIDE's Top 100 Private Companies (May 2000), and Synergy Research has named TollBridge a market-share leader for five consecutive quarters. TollBridge's solutions change the economics of delivering voice services to small businesses and residences by allowing carriers that own Class 5 switches to use broadband access technologies, such as DSL, cable and wireless to deliver toll-quality voice and integrated data services in the local loop and deliver toll-quality voice and integrated data services. For further information, visit the TollBridge website at www.tollbridgetech.com.