Vitech's Voice Over IP Connects Brazilian Telephony Operations With Cisco Systems Solution; Provides Significant Telephone Usage Cost-Savings to Company

Business Wire, June 29, 1999

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 29, 1999--

Vitech America, Inc. (Nasdaq:VTCH), a leading U.S.-based manufacturer and direct marketer of computer and integrated computing solutions in Brazil, today announced that it has installed a Voice Over IP (VoIP) solution engineered by ITC.net. VoIP enables voice and fax toll-quality communications to be routed free of telephone company (TELCO) charges across the Internet using IP protocol.

Vitech's VoIP installation uses the latest state-of-the-art IP telephony technology from the networking worldwide leader, Cisco Systems, models AS5300, 3640-Gatekeeper, Cisco 2611 voice gateways/data routers and Cisco Voice Manager Systems, as well as the Internet services of ITC.net. Vitech's factory in the northeastern state of Bahia is now connected to its business offices in Sao Paulo. Eighteen other sites have been added to the VoIP network, which is connecting several smaller satellite offices.

Vitech now has contact with its widely disbursed affiliates and company stores throughout Brazil free of TELCO conventional telephone charges. The new installation also adds international connectivity to Vitech's headquarters in Miami, Florida, connecting all international voice and fax traffic originating in Brazil to the U.S. via Miami.

Edward Kelly, Vitech's Chief Financial Officer, commented: "The strategic alliance that Vitech formed with ITC.net early this year is starting to pay-off in real dollar savings for our Company. One of our management's primary focuses this year is to continue to reduce expenses. We estimate that this telephony over IP solution will decrease our TELCO charges by approximately 80% per month. That's a significant savings for comparable service."

Currently, this ITC.net service provides over 172,800 minutes of international long distance phone calls between Vitech's corporate offices in Brazil and its headquarters in Miami each month. Microtec Sao Paulo and Vitech's PC factory in Bahia are each providing in excess of 1,296,000 minutes per month of IP telephony traffic within Brazil. Microtec's network is expected to continue to grow over the next year. ITC.net has over 300 additional sites targeted for VoIP installation this year and it expects to surpass the 5 million-minute mark sometime later this year, making this the largest VoIP network in Brazil.

Cisco's VoIP solution was chosen because of its top quality codec and IP routing technology. Cisco's advanced quality of service (QoS) features allow for smoother calls and less static and its dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) enables voice to co-exist with other network applications without flooding the network.

Corporate Information

Vitech America, Inc. (Nasdaq:VTCH) is a U.S.-headquartered manufacturer and direct marketer of its own brand name personal computers, business systems integration and networking equipment, servers and related products in Brazil under the names: Microtec(TM), Mythus(TM), Quest(TM), Spalla(TM), and Vesper(TM) and Vision(TM). The company's national sales force sells direct to corporate, government, individual and Small Office/Home Office (SoHo) customers.

Vitech is the low-cost producer of high-quality Microsoft(R) and Intel(R)-based systems offering complete solutions from low-end Pentium workstations to high-end integrated networks powered by multi-processor superservers. In addition, Vitech's Systems Integration Group designs, installs and provides ongoing services for local-area (LAN) and wide-area (WAN) networks.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information are available at http://www.cisco.com.

Catalyst, Cisco, Cisco IOS, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Except for the historical information herein, the matters discussed in this press release include forward-looking statements that may involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Future results may vary significantly based on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, risks in market acceptance of new products and continuing product demand, the impact of competitive products and pricing, changing economic conditions, both here and in Brazil and other risk factors detailed in the Company's most recent annual report and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.