Copper Mountain Introduces Turbo-Charged G.lite Line Card for CopperEdge DSL Concentrator Family - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, May 1, 2000

Copper Mountain Networks, Inc., (Nasdaq:CMTN) the market-share leader in business Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) equipment, Monday announced a new turbo-charged G.lite line card that extends the range of G.lite to 3.0 Mbps. This high-density, low power, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) 24-port G.lite line card, developed for the company's family of CopperEdge DSL concentrators, enables Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) and Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) to offer telecommuters and residential consumers cost-effective, high-speed, always-on Internet and remote LAN access integrated with lifeline Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) voice on a single copper telephone loop. The turbo-charged G.lite line card supports standard G.lite (ITU G.992.2), and standards-based G.lite customer premise equipment (CPE).

"Our existing G.lite line card offers many advantages, including high port density, low power consumption and low cost. By doubling the speed of G.lite, our customers will have the ability to enjoy these operational advantages, while dramatically closing the speed gap on Full-Rate ADSL implementations," said Rick Gilbert, president and chief executive officer of Copper Mountain Networks. "Copper Mountain will continue to improve and expand its consumer DSL variants, and capitalize on the exploding demand for residential DSL."

Copper Mountain's carrier and service provider customers can bring turbo-charged G.lite to market quickly by hot-inserting the new line cards into their existing CopperEdge chassis and using their existing CopperView network management software to provision and manage higher speed G.lite DSL connections. Carriers can mix and match the new line card with Symmetric DSL (SDSL) and ISDN DSL (IDSL) line cards and operate all of Copper Mountain's DSL variants concurrently in a single chassis, thus protecting their investment in CopperEdge concentrators.

Benefits to Providers, Subscribers With 3.0 Mbps G.lite, CLECs and service providers will be able to offer their subscribers a wider range of speed options, higher-value content, and a greater variety of differentiated services, at no incremental cost. In particular, turbo-charged G.lite gives CLECs an excellent line-sharing solution, enabling them to offer subscribers better data performance with simultaneous voice. Downstream speeds now range from 64 kbps to 3.0 Mbps in 32 kbps increments, while upstream speeds are the same as ordinary G.lite, ranging from 32 kbps to 512 kbps, also in 32 kbps increments. Maximum distance remains 19,000 feet over 26-gauge wire and 26,200 over 24-gauge wire. Since it is spectrally compatible with ordinary 1.5 Mbps G.lite and fits within the ADSL spectrum, the 3 Mbps G.lite service can be deployed on regular ADSL/G.lite copper loops.

Copper Mountain's new line card also complies with the G.lite standard for ATM over the local loop, enabling end-to-end ATM permanent virtual circuit (PVC) support to the service provider point-of-presence (PoP), corporate headquarters, or customer premise. Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) over ATM is also supported.

Turbo-charged Centillium Chipset Copper Mountain's new G.lite line card employs the new "turbo" mode software upgrade to the CopperLite G.lite central office (CO) chipset from Centillium Communications, Inc. Since the Centillium chipset uses only two chips, one analog and one digital, to support eight lines, Copper Mountain was able to develop a high-density, turbo-charged G.lite line card with 24 ports. The CopperEdge 200 can support up to 192 ports of "turbo" 3.0 Mbps G.lite, and the CopperEdge 150 can support up to 48 ports. High port density allows telecommunication service providers to minimize their physical footprint in the central office while allowing them to serve a large number of end users. Service providers can deploy more ports without exceeding the power budget of a regulated central office environment.

Line Card Compatible with Existing CPE Copper Mountain's new turbo-charged G.lite line card is fully interoperable with CPE and CPE chipsets that employ G.lite, also known as G.992.2, the ITU standard ratified in October 1999. Major CPE chipsets supported include those from ADI, Alcatel, Globespan, and Lucent as well as those from Centillium. The majority of existing G.lite CPE will be able to take advantage of the new higher speed and operate at 3.0 Mbps. Copper Mountain has conducted interoperability testing and certified CPE from its CopperCompatible partners Efficient, 3Com, and Cayman.

"Copper Mountain continues to provide us with opportunities to expand our market based on the new line cards targeted at new customers," said Greg Langdon, executive vice president of product strategy for Efficient Networks. "We have tested our SpeedStream CPE with the new turbo-charged G.lite line card and will continue to develop products that interoperate with Copper Mountain's G.lite offerings."

"Our research shows that the Year end 1999 U.S. DSL services revenue equals $258 million," said Erin Dunne of Vertical Systems Group (http://www.verticalsystems.com). "Copper Mountain's introduction of a turbo-charged G.lite line card will spur further growth of the market by allowing CLECs to offer higher-speed services at no extra cost. We expect that developments like this will make 2000 a watershed year for consumer DSL services in particular."