Vancouver, Canada – December 2, 2003 – fSONA Communications, an award-winning supplier of free space optical (FSO) communications equipment, announced today the signing of a Global Procurement Agreement with Bechtel, a premier provider of engineering, construction, and management services worldwide.

“Bechtel is an exceptional company with an impressive number of projects,” said fSONA’s CEO & President, Theresa Carbonneau, “fSONA is pleased to be able to help Bechtel serve their customers. The SONAbeam™ series is quickly and economically installed, and therefore we believe it is especially suited for deployment in areas that lack infrastructure.”

“We are pleased to add the SONAbeam™ product line to our approved portfolio of available network products,” said Jake MacLeod, Principal Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Bechtel Telecommunications. “FSO systems provide high bandwidth at a fraction of the cost of fiber optic cable. Additionally, the time for deployment is drastically reduced when compared to placement of fiber optic cable. We believe FSO technology will provide specific solutions for short haul, high-capacity communication links in both private and public sectors. In particular, FSO technology can be utilized in emergency restoration of communications systems.”

Bechtel Telecommunications has been using the fSONA SONAbeam™ 155-M free space optics link at their Frederick, MD headquarters office for over a year and a half. The link provides connectivity at 100 Mbps Ethernet speed or more than 100 times the speed of a broadband DSL line from the headquarters building to conference center facilities across Route I-270, Maryland’s busy technology corridor.

Bechtel Telecommunications analyzes free space optics technology, along with other leading-edge technologies, in its laboratories. In December 2002, the Bechtel Telecommunications Technical Journal published an article entitled “Free Space Optics: A Viable Last-Mile Solution.” The report, written by Vaidyanathan Ramasarma, concludes that “Optical Wireless is a mature and reliable approach for broadband access. FSO systems offer a viable solution toward building optical connectivity in a cost-effective, quick, and reliable manner.”

About Bechtel
Bechtel Corporation is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco, California, with approximately 44,000 employees, more than 50 offices worldwide, and 2002 revenues of $11.6 billion. Bechtel Telecommunications, a unit of Bechtel Corporation, provides design, engineering, project management, and construction management for a full range of telecommunication systems, through major offices in London, Shanghai, and its world headquarters near Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.bechtel.com or www.bechteltelecoms.com.

About fSONA
fSONA Systems is recognized as the preferred provider of optical wireless solutions for government, enterprise and service provider markets around the globe. Leveraging leading edge advancements in 1550nm optical transmission, the SONAbeam™ family of systems, based on free-space-optics (FSO), use a globally unlicensed, wireless technology to provide speeds up to 2.5 Gbps over distances up to 7km. For more information visit www.fsona.com or www.free-space-optics.org

Further Information
For more information about fSONA, SONAbeam or Free-Space Optical Wireless, please contact:

604-273-6333
media@fsona.com

fSONA and SONAbeam® are trademarks of fSONA Networks. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.