e-tel corporation Achieves Interoperability Milestone; Company's Standards-Based VoIP Phones Integrate With Equipment From Top Telecommunications Firms.

Business/Technology Editors

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 29, 2000

e-tel corporation, the visionary behind the industry's first standards-compliant line of IP telephones, today reached a milestone in interoperability. The company's line of VoIP phones easily integrate with equipment from 15 of the top telecommunications companies, including Coyote Networks, Lucent Technologies' AG Communication Systems subsidiary, Telos Corporation, Netrix Corporation, Quicknet Technologies, Natural MicroSystems and Dialogic, an Intel Company.

Aimed at carriers, ISPs, CLECS, ILECS and cable operators, e-tel's phones allow service providers and telephone equipment manufacturers to easily deploy IP switched voice and enhanced digital services directly to the customer desktop or kitchen wall. e-tel will showcase its standards-based VoIP phones at the VON show in booth #615 and interoperating with equipment from Natural MicroSystems and Dialogic in their booths.

"We designed our VoIP phones from the ground up as open, standards-based products. Because of that foresight, and because we were first to market, we have become the VoIP phone of choice for service providers who want to quickly integrate IP telephones with IP PBXes and other VoIP applications," said Matt Lukens, company founder and CEO.

According to Lukens, e-tel's goal is to offer VoIP phones that are interoperable, easy to implement, and that resolve the many technical issues related to introducing real-time voice packets into the data stream. "VoIP will be the anchoring application that puts an IP based service delivery terminal within reach of everyone. We will work with the carriers and telephone equipment manufacturers to enable a wide range of new services to be delivered directly to businesses and homes using our platform and variations we develop jointly with our partners," he said.

The Flexibility of e-tel's Standards VoIP Phones Key for Natural MicroSystems

Natural MicroSystems (Nasdaq: NMSS) will demonstrate the e-tel FreeRide phone working with its CG 6000C, the industry's highest density single board solution for IP media gateways and IP media servers. In the demonstration of Natural MicroSystems' PacketMedia TM media server technology, an e-tel IP phone is used to create and place an IP telephony phone call, which is terminated in a second e-tel IP phone. If this phone is busy, the call is passed to a PacketMedia voice mail application running on the CG 6000C.

"IP phones are an important part of the all IP infrastructure that many enterprises are adopting," stated Jack Chase, director of IP Telephony Marketing at Natural MicroSystems. "We chose the e-tel VoIP phone to demonstrate our new products at VON because it is very flexible and because it is H.323 standards based."

e-tel's Support For Open Standards Makes It Dialogic's Demo Choice

Dialogic, an Intel company, will show the e-tel FreeRide phone interoperating with its CT Media(TM) server software.

"We are pleased that forward-thinking companies like e-tel are building innovative products built on open standards," said Jim Machi, director of Product Management Dialogic. "We are showcasing e-tel's standards-based VoIP phones interoperating with CT Media and DM3 IPLink to demonstrate how easily our media server software integrates support for both analog and H.323 devices."

About e-tel phones

e-tel's FreeRide phones range from a simple, single line telephone to a multi-featured screen model. They are fully H.323 standard compliant. Support for MGCP and SIP is optional. The phones are user-friendly, functioning just like traditional phones, and are available with an additional standard telephone line interface for routing calls over an IP network or the existing telephone network. Each model includes advanced features such as local and remote configuration, using Web, SNMP and CTI device management interfaces. e-tel's VoIP phones easily integrate with existing network infrastructures and with existing gateways and IP PBXs.

About e-tel

e-tel corporation delivered the first H.323 standards compliant telephones in the market in 1999 and is the leading developer and manufacturer of Voice-over-IP telephones, IP appliance phones, and low density residential VoIP gateways. e-tel is a privately held venture capital financed company based in West Warwick, RI. For more information on e-tel, visit its website at www.e-telcorp.com or call 401-826-1520.