Business Services Industry

Members of The ATM Forum and MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance Approve Merger; Vote Creates MFA Forum

Business Wire, April 14, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- The ATM Forum and the MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance announced today that their respective memberships have approved the merger of the two organizations. The combined entity will be known as the MFA Forum, with legal completion expected within 30 days. The merger, proposed by the organizations' leadership last year, will consolidate the groups and leverage the strengths of each in addressing next generation, multi-protocol, packet-based networks. The goal of the merged organization will be to advance the recognition, acceptance and implementation of packet technologies in the global networking communications industry.

"The completion of this merger mirrors the trend we are seeing in the telecommunications industry as large carriers consolidate service infrastructures," said Mark Seery, program director at RHK Inc. "The merged MFA Forum will equal more than the sum of its parts. Both the members and the industry will benefit from enhanced collaboration among system suppliers that are trying to provide convergence solutions to carriers."

"The ATM Forum is entering this new phase having achieved what it set out to do," said Marlis Humphrey of Harris Corporation, chairman of the board, The ATM Forum. "In carrier networks throughout the world, ATM is now an embedded, reliable and secure technology that continues to deliver on the promise of security and flexibility in delivering the Quality of Service guarantees it was designed for. We look forward to the enhanced collaboration and synergies that this merger will bring to developing the interworking standards necessary for the deployment of next generation, converged packet networks."

"As a merged entity, the MFA Forum will represent the industry's technology innovators in MPLS, ATM and Frame Relay," said Andrew G. Malis of Tellabs, president and chairman of the board of the MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance. "We look forward to building on the successes the two groups have had over the years and expect our collaborative technical efforts to bear fruit immediately."

The board of directors of the MFA Forum will include Bernard da Costa, Bell Canada; Joe Kimball, Sprint; Gary Leonard, Riverstone Networks; Andrew Malis, Tellabs; Doug O'Leary, Verizon; John Rutemiller, Marconi; Ananda Sen Gupta, Agilent Technologies; David Sinicrope, Ericsson; Tom Walsh, Lucent Technologies; Rick Wilder, Alcatel.

The ATM Forum and the MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance Technical Committees will continue previously established projects, operating as Working Groups under a unified Technical Committee. A joint Interoperability Working Group will oversee the organization's test and interoperability efforts to promote seamless interworking between ATM, MPLS and Frame Relay networks.

About The ATM Forum

The ATM Forum was founded in 1991 as a non-profit international organization dedicated to speeding the education and mass deployment of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and other communications technologies as the foundation for broadband networks. Throughout its 13-year history, The ATM Forum has successfully developed over 200 interoperability specifications that have been widely deployed by the industry, and has been a leader in the promotion of industry-wide cooperation on key technologies such as MPLS, DSL, FR, UMTS, Gigabit Ethernet, and SONET/SDH. Its work to enhance ATM interworking with emerging technologies and to enable existing and emerging applications and infrastructures that take advantage of ATM's inherent QoS, security and management features, will be continued within the merged organization. For more information go to: http://www.atmforum.com/.> About the MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance

The MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance is an international industry organization that is advancing the recognition and acceptance of MPLS and Frame Relay technologies in the global telecom industry. The Alliance is driving worldwide deployment of multi-vendor MPLS and Frame Relay networks, applications and services, through interoperability initiatives, implementation agreements, and educational and marketing resources and programs. The Alliance currently has more than 50 members. For Alliance membership information please contact Alexa Morris, executive director, at 510-608-5914 or via e-mail at amorris@mplsforum.org. Additional information about The MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance is available online at http://www.mplsforum.org/.>