Internet Photonics Names Telecom Industry Pioneer, Richard Liebhaber and Convergent Networks CEO Surya Panditi, to Board of Directors

Business Wire, Jan 10, 2002

Business Editors

SHREWSBURY, N.J. & MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 2002

Internet Photonics Inc., a supplier of carrier-grade Optical Ethernet solutions, today announced the appointment of two industry leaders, Richard Liebhaber and Surya Panditi to its board of directors.

"We are truly fortunate to add Dick Liebhaber and Surya Panditi to our board," said Gregory Koss the President and CEO of Internet Photonics. "The combination of experience and telecom industry knowledge they bring will be invaluable in helping us realize our potential in selling to incumbent service providers."

Mr. Liebhaber's distinguished 31 year career at IBM included a key role in the establishment of Prodigy and in managing Satellite Business Systems (SBS), a joint venture of IBM, Aetna and Comsat. After retiring from IBM in 1985, Mr. Liebhaber joined MCI as an executive vice president and member of the management committee. During his ten years there, the company developed into a major global telecommunications carrier.

Mr. Liebhaber also serves on the boards of KPN/Qwest, Avici Systems, ILOG Inc. and JDS Uniphase. He also served on the board of directors of Qwest from its inception in 1996 through January, 2000.

"Internet Photonics is the first company to develop a transport platform that truly realizes the promise of Optical Ethernet," said Liebhaber. "Now service providers can deliver scalable, profitable data services at significantly lower capital and operating expense levels."

Mr Panditi was recently named president and CEO of Convergent Networks, a leading provider of broadband voice infrastructure systems. He is also Chairman of Avici Systems, Inc, which develops revolutionary, high-performance backbone switches/routers for next generation IP-based carrier networks. He led Avici from the very early stages in June 1997, through a successful IPO in July 2000, and continued to build the business until handing over the operational role to a new CEO in mid-2001.

Prior to that Mr. Panditi served as vice president and general manager of U.S. Robotics' LAN Infrastructure business, which developed that company's Ethernet and ATM switching businesses. Mr Panditi also held positions at Ungermann-Bass, Telco Systems and Intel.

"Internet Photonics has come to market with a unique evolutionary approach that allows service providers to deploy its carrier-grade solutions side-by-side with existing SONET infrastructure," said Panditi. "The combination of carrier-grade optical Ethernet with compelling economics and scalable, low risk deployment gives Internet Photonics a strong first-mover advantage at a time when service providers are faced with the dilemma of lowering capital costs while bringing new, profitable data services to market quickly."

Established in October of 2000, Internet Photonics' founding technical team hailed from Bell Labs, which also provided equipment, technology, designs, and intellectual property to help launch the Company. Internet Photonics owns or licenses nine pending patents on carrier-grade Optical Ethernet transport and related technologies. It is leveraging that technology and intellectual property in developing Optical Ethernet transport platforms with a compelling economic model that will set new cost standards for reducing carriers' capital and operating expenses.

These platforms will streamline and accelerate service provisioning while offering dramatic size, footprint, power consumption, and capacity advantages over current solutions. Internet Photonics is the first company to break current price barriers with carrier-class Optical Ethernet products that offer non-disruptive integration into legacy SONET networks. Analysts estimate the market for products from Internet Photonics could exceed $1 billion in 2002 and grow up to $7 billion by 2004.

Sprout Group, the venture capital affiliate of Credit Suisse First Boston Corporation, led the Company's first round of financing. AT&T is also an equity holder in the Company. To date, Internet Photonics has raised $31M.

About Internet Photonics

Internet Photonics is an innovative early-stage company that is delivering carrier-grade Gigabit Optical Ethernet solutions with 10 Gigabit DWDM transport to allow service providers to sell profitable high-bandwidth data services alongside existing legacy services. Based jointly in Shrewsbury NJ and Marlborough MA, Internet Photonics is a member of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance and the Metro Ethernet Forum. The Company is developing next-generation optical transport solutions that will offer metro service providers around the world a scalable, invest-as-you-grow platform with Ethernet simplicity and carrier-grade reliability and manageability. For more information, please visit www.internetphotonics.com.