General Bandwidth and 2Wire Partner to Deliver VoDSL Solution for the Residential Market

Cambridge Telcom Report, June 5, 2000

General Bandwidth Inc., a telecommunications equipment manufacturer delivering the first voice-over-broadband (VoBroadband) gateway designed for mass deployment, and 2Wire Inc., the leading supplier of residential gateways, Tuesday announced an interoperability agreement that will help to promote the standardization of Voice over DSL (VoDSL) for the residential market. Under this agreement, the two companies will work together to ensure seamless VoDSL capabilities between General Bandwidth's G6 voice gateway and 2Wire's HomePortal residential gateway products.

This partnership addresses the demand from service providers who have identified the residential market as a key part of their broadband deployment strategies. According to TeleChoice, a leading market research firm, the residential market represented 70 percent of DSL deployments in 1999. This booming market for broadband connectivity is a prime target for service providers deploying VoDSL. VoDSL leverages the bandwidth of a DSL connection to deliver multiple derived voice lines over a single copper pair, dramatically improving the economics of delivering voice services.

"Enabling residential voice services is a key component of our long-term strategy for the 2Wire HomePortal product family," said Roy Johnson, vice president of marketing and business development, 2Wire. "We're pleased to work with General Bandwidth to ensure seamless interoperability between their VoDSL gateway and our HomePortal residential gateway to enable carriers to offer a complete service bundle for the residential market."

This announcement represents a complete solution for service providers' unique requirements for delivering VoDSL to the residential market: residential lifeline services, self provisioning and integrated home networking, all in a multi-vendor implementation.

Residential lifeline services. General Bandwidth's G6 voice gateway incorporates its patented Packetized Residential Lifeline (PRL) technology, the only available solution that guarantees lifeline services. In the event of a power failure, the G6 and 2Wire's HomePortal gateway enable calls to be re-routed to a back up POTS circuit to maintain voice services.

Self Provisioning. 2Wire's HomePortal residential gateway, which is easy to install, manage and upgrade, together with General Bandwidth's flow-through, Web-enabled self provisioning, allows service providers to dramatically reduce the costs associated with servicing residential customers, and offers an entirely new way to reduce customer churn.

Integrated Functionality. 2Wire's HomePortal residential gateway combines a DSL broadband modem with several in-home networking architectures such as Ethernet, HomePNA and USB to manage an integrated data, voice and entertainment network. Using HomePortal with existing phone wires, everyone in the home can share up to 8Mbps of ADSL connection to the Internet, and household members can share information and resources with each other within the house at data throughputs of up to 10Mbps. With support for VoDSL, the HomePortal enables consumers to set up multiple phone lines for the home along with their high-speed DSL connection.

End-to-end VoDSL solutions. General Bandwidth and 2Wire's interoperability partnership is based on standards being approved by the DSL Forum for BLES (Broadband Loop Emulation Service) implementations of VoDSL. This partnership enables service providers to deploy a multi-vendor solution to the residential market.

"General Bandwidth's standards-based approach towards voice over broadband allows us to work with best-in-class CPE vendors like 2Wire to quickly enable our customers to deploy new services," said Brian Henrichs, vice president of business development for General Bandwidth. "This partnership demonstrates our mutual dedication to enabling service providers to meet the requirements of the residential market, and quickly leverage their investment in broadband to include the delivery of revenue-generating, VoDSL services."

General Bandwidth Inc. is a telecommunications equipment manufacturer that enables toll quality voice services to residential and business customers across emerging broadband access networks such as digital subscriber line (DSL), cable and wireless. The company's Voice over Broadband (VoBroadband) approach provides more than 200 independent voice lines over a single broadband connection, allowing service providers to offer packetized voice services over the last mile that meet and exceed the quality and functionality of today's POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

Founded in 1999, General Bandwidth is located at 12303 Technology Blvd., Austin, Texas 78727; phone: 512/681-5400; fax: 512/681-5401; toll free: 877/818-2160; www.generalbandwidth.com.

2Wire delivers a full suite of broadband products and services to the residential marketplace. The 2Wire HomePortal products are the first intelligent residential gateways to integrate the wealth of options available through the Internet and create a complete home data, voice and entertainment network. 2Wire's Web site (www.2wire.com) offers comprehensive, impartial information on DSL, the future of broadband services and home networking, and the most complete and accurate DSL look-up service in the United States. 2Wire was named as one of the Hot 100 Private Companies by Upside Magazine. The 2Wire HomePortal series was recognized with three significant honors at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, including Best of Show.