Sonim Technologies Lays Foundation for Standards-Based Push-to-Talk; Key Developments at 3GSM World Congress Create Further Momentum for PTT

Business Wire, Feb 25, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

3GSM World Congress 2003

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 25, 2003

Sonim Technologies Inc. (www.sonimtech.com), the leader in enabling today's wireless data networks to deliver high-margin voice services, today commented on key wireless industry developments at 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, as well as Sonim's initiatives to lay the foundation for Push-To-Talk (PTT).

John Burns, president and CEO of Sonim Technologies, said: "Sonim set out three years ago to bring an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) compliant PTT service to market over GPRS. A joint announcement in Cannes from Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens to standardize an IMS-based solution for PTT has validated our approach.

"With IMS-based PTT, the global GSM community has an interoperable and scalable solution that can be deployed worldwide from day one. Given all our work with mobile operators and ecosystem partners, Sonim has been a key contributor to enabling this innovation."

"The industry-wide support of IMS-based PTT will continue to further accelerate time-to-market for the service," said Devine Kofiloto, senior research analyst, EMC.

"Validated in North America and now available over GSM, PTT is a multi-billion-dollar revenue-generating service that provides enterprise- and consumer-based subscribers with a truly instant communications environment with expected rapid global growth. The service provides the operator community with incremental revenue opportunities on today's data networks, while offering consumers widespread availability of applications on a variety of feature-rich devices."

"Each year, the wireless community agrees on one or two key initiatives that will help move the industry forward. Coming out of Cannes, the consensus is that PTT is a key service innovation that creates significant value for mobile operators as well as the wireless community at large," continued Burns.

For wireless users, PTT offers a new means of communicating with one or many individuals at the push of a button on a wireless device. With PTT services, users are able to view presence information of their friends and colleagues, instantly connect in "walkie-talkie" mode with one or many of them, or leave voice messages if they cannot reach them.

The Sonim Instant Communications Solution also enables Direct Message Service, with which a user can select one or many individuals in the wireless device's contact list, create a voice message of any length and send it instantly at the push of a button. As a recipient of a Direct Message, the user is alerted of a new voice message, and can retrieve that message instantly without calling a voicemail service.

Highlights of milestones at the 3GSM World Congress include:

-- Validation and support for an IMS-based standard for PTT, delivering an interoperable solution announced by industry leaders Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens.

-- Conclusion of a Pan-European market research study in conjunction with Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), which concluded that PTT and related voice messaging applications like Sonim's Direct Message Service are expected to be as successful, if not more successful, than SMS in the next few years.

-- Implementation of Sonim's standards-based client in conjunction with Tresor, as well as expanded collaboration with Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Symbian and Intel.

Sonim's IMS-compliant architecture is designed from the ground up to ensure large-scale deployment and interoperability with other network infrastructure. The client/server solution provides SIP-based call control and presence management, and leverages an extremely efficient transport protocol using RTP to deliver superior quality real-time voice over today's wireless data networks.

By dynamically optimizing bandwidth consumption to account for changing network types and conditions, Sonim's software solution ensures superior quality and seamless availability on a GPRS network, as well as across EDGE and W-CDMA networks. The Sonim client, endorsed by industry leaders such as TI, Intel and Infineon, is tightly integrated with core telephony functions, minimizing power, processing and memory utilization within a broad spectrum of devices.

About Sonim Technologies Inc.

Sonim Technologies enables today's wireless data networks to deliver high-margin voice services. This standards-based solution provides real-time communication services such as Push-To-Talk that combine the flexibility of mobile messaging with the ease-of-use of voice. The end-to-end, IP-based solution creates significant new revenue streams and delivers superior "return on bandwidth" for mobile operators.

Sonim has headquarters in San Mateo, with sales and engineering offices in Italy, the United Kingdom and India. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.sonimtech.com.

Note to Editors: Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.