Nissho Iwai, Pacific Rim Technology Leader, to Distribute Sonus Networks Packet Telephony Suite

The Award-Winning Sonus GSX9000 Supports Immediate Development and Provisioning of New Services, Enabling Nissho Iwai's Carrier Customers To Build Marketshare.

WESTFORD, Mass., June 9, 1999 – Sonus Networks, an emerging leader in carrier-class packet telephony solutions, announced Nissho Iwai has signed an agreement to distribute the award-winning Sonus GSX9000 and Sonus Packet Telephony suite to the Japanese carrier market. The agreement enables Nissho Iwai to expand its leadership in providing telecommunications equipment and services to Japan's carrier market by providing its customers with the industry's most scalable, reliable and open voice-over-packet solutions. The agreement enables Nissho Iwai's carrier customers to build new revenue streams by rapidly developing and delivering competitive new customer services via the Sonus GSX9000 and the Sonus Open Services Architecture^TM (OSA). 

Gene Kawaratani, AVP of Nissho Iwai American Corp. noted: "The Sonus Packet Telephony suite delivers clear advantages over both legacy circuit switches and the array of voice-over-packet market entrants, and is a clearly optimal choice for providing our customers with the important advantages of IP Telephony. The Sonus GSX9000 and Packet Telephony suite enable our carrier customers to expand their customer base through the immediate development and delivery of highly competitive new services, while reducing their ongoing network operations costs by hundreds of millions of dollars a year."

Sonus President and CEO Hassan Ahmed noted: "Nissho Iwai is acknowledged as a leader in introducing advanced new technologies and telecom systems to Japanese telecommunications organizations. Japan is one of the most visionary and aggressively growing of the world's telecommunications markets, and we look forward to working closely with Nissho Iwai as a valued partner."

The GSX9000 is the first carrier-class Open Services Switch with the capacity, reliability and sophistication to enable the new converged PSTN/IP-based infrastructure. It is the central component of the Sonus Networks Open Services Architecture (OSA), a unique, open approach through which new services can be created easily and implemented quickly. Using the GSX9000 in the network infrastructure, the Sonus Networks OSA enables carriers to expand their network coverage and deploy new services more rapidly than with any other approach. 

The GSX9000 Open Services Switch and the Sonus Packet Telephony suite were designed and developed to meet the rigorous requirements of public network service providers. These include: complete redundancy of all system elements, toll-quality voice, interoperability with the SS7 network, scalability to hundreds of thousands of calls, and NEBS compliance. Moreover, the Sonus GSX9000 and Sonus Packet Telephony suite go well beyond this base level functionality, paving the way for significant operational savings, new multi-service applications and significant incremental revenues through a new generation of customer services.

About Sonus Networks

Sonus Networks, Inc. is delivering a new class of carrier solutions that enable the movement of telephony to converged circuit-packet networks, and the development of a new generation of innovative voice and data services. The Sonus Packet Telephony suite and Open Services Architecture (OSA) cut the time-to-market for competitive new service products from years to weeks, allowing carriers and third-party developers to sustain and expand marketshare, and build important new revenue streams. Its highly scalable products fully interoperate with and extend the life and utility of today's public network. 

Sonus was named one of Red Herring's "Top Ten to Watch" companies, awarded Data Communications magazine's prestigious Hot Startup of the Year and Hot Product of the Year awards. Sonus was also recognized by Technologic Partners' with the Investor's Choice award, and received an honorable mention for the "Most Promising New IP Technology" at the 1999 SUPERQuest awards.. Additional information is available at: http://www.sonusnet.com

About Nissho Iwai

Trading titan Nissho Iwai operates in several industries, including IT, machinery, metals, commodities, construction, and energy. Through more than 550 affiliated companies in nearly 80 countries, it manages infrastructure projects and builds power plants, produces lumber and builds condominiums, imports consumer goods, and offers financial services such as currency trading, bond dealing, and precious metals brokerage. Nissho Iwai's information projects include satellite and cable TV and telecommunications infrastructure projects in Japan, Latin America and China.

As a group, Nissho Iwai dominates the Japanese WDM market and introduces IP-related hardware and software through its engineering oriented affiliates including Nissho Electronics, Nissho Iwai Infocom Systems and others.