Halló Telecom Selects Cirpack Local Exchange Switches to Provide Telephony Services in Iceland

Cirpacks Voice Switching Platform Delivers Cost Effective Subscriber and Transit Services with Ultra Fast Time to Market

VON Europe, Helsinki, Finland, June 11, 2002 – CIRPACK, a leading vendor of next generation telephony equipment for telecom operators infrastructures, today announced that Halló Telecom, one of the largest Alternative Telecom Service Providers in Iceland, has chosen its Local Exchange Node (LEN) to deliver telephony services to all its business and residential customers.

By moving its entire voice infrastructure to a Cirpack Class-5 solution, Halló can now directly connect its customers and introduce innovative services. The solution is also based on Multiservice Access Platforms from Be Connected, linked to Cirpack Local Exchange Nodes via V5.2 to deliver POTS, ISDN and various broadband DSL services to subscribers. Cirpack LEN have SDH interfaces to bring advanced routing features to Hallós backbone connected via SS7 to Icelands ILEC and several long distance carriers.

With Cirpacks solutions we have been able to quickly build a very flexible voice infrastructure at a much lower cost," explains Ingvar Garoarsson, Halló Telecoms CEO. Our network can now deliver a full range of legacy Class-5 and Class-4 services as well as unique value added services. Furthermore, Halló is now ready for next generation packet telephony such as VoIP. By choosing Cirpacks equipment, we have reduced our operating expenses, boosted our revenue, and accelerated our time to market."

More and more operators are turning to Cirpack to build carrier-class voice infrastructure," explains Thierry Dassetto, Cirpacks Vice President of Sales and Business Development. Our solutions make it possible to build highly flexible and scalable networks delivering the fastest returns on investment and the lowest operating costs. We are pleased to provide Halló Telecom with the leading technology enabling their success and their revenue growth," he adds.

Cirpack Local Exchange Nodes are the perfect answer to Halló Telecoms strategic needs: 50% lower acquisition costs, 70% lower operating costs, access to all the functionalities of legacy public telephone exchanges, full implementation of SS7, ISDN and V5.2 for wide interoperability, support for any type of traffic and protocols (TDM, ATM and IP) to connect any local loop as appropriate (DSL, WLL, cable, etc.), superior scalability to handle up to 180,000 DSO and 5 millions BHCA, etc. In addition, the entire solution has been deployed in less than two weeks and is now entirely managed by Hallós technicians for increased flexibility and profitability.

About Halló Telecom
Hallo was founded in 1998 as an alternative telecom service provider in Iceland, delivering international services and initiated considerable price decreases for long-distance calls. In September 2000, Hallo merged with Heimsnet, a complete Internet solutions provider. In June 2001 Hallo expanded operations to include national calls.

In May 2002, Hallo launched new telecom services, including local loop connectivity. This constitutes a breaking point in Icelands history since it is the first time that residential and corporate customers have access to a global line of competitive telecommunications services. Hallo is constantly strengthening its operations and is now on track to double its customer base by the end of 2002.

For more information, please visit www.hallo.is or contact info@hallo.is.

About CIRPACK
CIRPACK develops next generation Local Exchange and Transit switches with native support for TDM, ATM and IP networks and protocols simultaneously. Based on open platforms running standard technologies, CIRPACKs equipment are fast and easy to deploy and allow savings of 50% in CAPEX (investments) and 70% in OPEX (operations). CIRPACK deployed the world largest SoftSwitch-based TDM/Packet PSTN with more than 30 Class-5 SoftSwitches and 150 Media/Signaling Gateways, as early as 1998.

CIRPACKs carrier-class solutions help telecom operators preserve existing investments when introducing next generation voice services such as VoDSL, VoIP, VoWLL or VoCable. CIRPACKs highly scalable telephony platform meets the need of small service providers having few customers as well as those of larger operators looking for multi-thousand E1 nodes.

CIRPACK partners with industry leaders to provide global solutions, such as Amper, Cisco, Compta, Fujitsu Telecom, IBM, Marconi, Netbricks, Polycom, RAD, Telindus and more. CIRPACKs customers include Kaptech (LDCOM Group), Tiscali, Free Telecom, Hallo Telecom and Altitude Telecom among others. CIRPACK is a European company headquartered near Paris.

For more information, please visit www.cirpack.com or contact info@cirpack.com.