Vancouver, Canada – October 15, 2003 – fSONA Communications, a leading provider of free space optical wireless solutions, announced today at ITU Telecom World in Geneva, Switzerland the launch of the entire SONAbeam™ E Series of products.

The SONAbeam™ E Series fills a need in the market for free space optics solutions that are compact, economical and carrier-class. The SONAbeam™ E Series includes two redundant high-powered lasers transmitting at 1550nm within a simple, environmentally-sealed housing and transmits at distances from 50m to 4600m (160 ft to 2.9 mi). Interchangeable interface cards allow customers to quickly and inexpensively ramp bandwidth or switch protocols. The interface cards support NxT1/E1, 10/100 Ethernet, E3/DS3, STM-1/OC-3 protocols or datarate transparent transmission and offer the added reliability of clock data-rate recovery (CDR). Additionally, the complete E Series can be managed over Ethernet and is IP addressable.

"Customers feel confident using our products because they are designed to withstand the most extreme conditions. However, in certain situations they need a scaled-down version,” says fSONA president and chief executive officer, Theresa Carbonneau. “The new SONAbeam E series fulfills the requirement for a compact, cost-effective FSO solution. Based on feedback from leading international carriers, we expect customer demand to be great, especially in areas that, for one reason or another, lack infrastructure.”

The SONAbeam™ E Series is unlicensed worldwide and can be easily transported to installation sites making it ideal for situations that require rapid deployment. In regions that lack wire-line infrastructure or have had infrastructure damaged or destroyed by war or natural disasters, the E Series can quickly establish a high-speed communications network. With a SONAbeam™ E rapid deployment kit agencies and enterprises can be prepared for emergency restoration of service or temporary deployments. Emerging service providers will find the E series perfect for aggregating the bandwidth of off-net buildings and RF networks. In addition, mobile wireless network operators who wish to expand their coverage or capacity will find the E’s small form-factor very appealing.

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.