White Rock Networks Acquires Seranoa Networks; White Rock Adds Advanced IP Aggregation Capabilities to Its Family of SONET Access, Transport and Switching Systems.

RICHARDSON, Texas -- White Rock Networks, a leading provider of next-generation optical transport systems for metro markets, announced today it has acquired Seranoa Networks Inc, a Boxborough, Mass., manufacturer of intelligent Service Edge concentrators.

Seranoa Networks was recently named Hot Start-Up for 2004 by Telecommunications Magazine because of the unique and creative approach Seranoa took in dramatically reducing a service provider's cost to deliver data services in the access portion of a carrier's network. Seranoa Networks' family of carrier-class Service Edge Concentrators allow service providers to substantially reduce the cost of delivering IP services to business customers over traditional T1/T3 or HDSL access circuits, maximizing their leverage of their embedded access infrastructure. Seranoa's unique IP-aware switching technology changes the economics of network access and edge aggregation so that providers can immediately improve the profitability of existing business services while facilitating a convergence to a core IP/MPLS data network.

"White Rock's current Access, Transport and Switching product family has been successful with carriers because it saves carriers capex and opex dollars in the delivery of both legacy TDM and Ethernet services from the metro core to the fiber's edge," said Lonnie Martin, Founder/CEO of White Rock Networks. "The acquisition of Seranoa's products and technology substantially broadens our market coverage since their products reduce the costs of terminating and transporting all of the data that comes into a carrier's network from beyond the fiber's edge. Huge savings come from aggregating IP and Ethernet traffic as close to the network edge as possible, and from adapting it to native Ethernet for efficient hand-off to Edge Routers. In addition, Seranoa's products open a completely new market for White Rock with Internet Service Providers because they lease expensive transmission bandwidth (rather than operating their own fiber networks), and we can now help them reduce their costs of doing so," he added.

Seranoa's current products will become White Rock's VLX300(TM) and VLX400(TM) Service Edge Concentrators and will be supported by White Rock's existing customer service organization based in Richardson, Texas.

The VLX300 and VLX400 as well as other members of White Rock's product family will be on display at OFC/NFOEC 2005 in Anaheim, Calif., March 8-10, 2005 (White Rock's booth #3014).

About the VLX300 and VLX400

White Rock's VLX300 supports IP subscriber traffic and offers up to 12 channelized or clear-channel T3 (DS3) interfaces, and up to two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. When deployed in a service provider POP, the VLX300 provides low-cost IP subscriber aggregation and edge router optimization. When deployed in a Central Office or co-lo, the VLX300 dramatically reduces IP data backhaul costs.

White Rock's VLX400 supports IP and TDM subscriber traffic and offers 12 channelized or clear-channel T3s (DS3s) and up to two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. It includes TDM grooming capabilities of a 3/1/0 Digital Cross-Connect System (DCS) in addition to IP-aware Layer 2 switching capabilities, and is primarily deployed in a Central Office or co-lo facility for IP and TDM backhaul bandwidth optimization.

About White Rock Networks

White Rock Networks (www.whiterock.com) provides carriers with a family of next-generation optical transport and access platforms that enable the cost-effective delivery of high-speed services in metro areas. The company's innovative building-block architecture provides carriers with "step-function" improvements in their capital and operating costs, as well as deployment flexibility in serving a variety of metro customers.

White Rock's VLX2006(TM) is the first OC-48 ADM to offer fully protected Ethernet ports for the transport of business-critical traffic and the first SONET OC-48 access product under $10K. The VLX2006 enables carriers to offer Ethernet transport with the same carrier-class reliability that has always been expected of traditional TDM traffic.

White Rock's VLX2020(R) OC-48/192 SONET Transport/Switching Platform supports multiple optical access or transport rings while simultaneously providing intelligent DCS capabilities for both legacy TDM and Ethernet traffic in a compact, low-cost package.