Acme Packet Claims Top Spot

SAN JOSE, Calif. and BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Acme Packet(R) today announced its leadership in all measurements of session border control market share - sessions, units and revenue. The company's lead is rapidly increasing, as in the second half of 2004 Acme Packet captured 74% market share for sessions, over one-third of the market (34%) for unit shipments, and nearly one-third of the market (31%) for revenue. The company's calculations are based on the most recent report from Infonetics Research's quarterly market share and forecast service, "Service Provider Next Gen Voice Equipment," published on February 18, 2005.

"Acme Packet, an early pioneer in the session border controller market, has consistently proven itself to be the leading vendor with an enviable tier one service provider customer base," stated Kevin Mitchell, Directing Analyst with Infonetics Research. "Infonetics Research has been tracking the session border controller market since late 2002, and it has ramped up significantly since that time, growing by over ten times. SBCs are a key part of the overall next gen voice architecture and carriers are increasingly adopting them for peering and end-user services. Acme Packet is in the vanguard of this movement."

"Our pronounced market share lead in session border controllers is directly attributed to the remarkable quarter over quarter growth that we have achieved in all areas of the business, and it is not surprising considering our five-fold revenue increase in 2004 over 2003," commented Andy Ory, CEO and co-founder, Acme Packet. "Our 29 tier one service provider customers and our impressive worldwide presence - which currently includes major customers in every region and a local presence in 12 countries and 17 cities - are also important barometers of our progress."

---In a separate release---

SAN JOSE, Calif. and BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Acme Packet(R) today announced that Telenor, the largest telecommunications operator in Norway and an innovative player in wireline and international wireless communications, has selected the Net-Net(R) session border controllers for its hosted enterprise VoIP service offering. The Net-Net products are providing the security, SLA assurance and service reach features that are imperative for the delivery of high quality, premium IP services, such as VoIP, across networks using SIP and H.323.

The Net-Net products are already deployed for the enterprise VoIP service, currently available to Norwegian business customers countrywide. For this service offering Telenor is connecting its H.323 backbone network, based on the Alcatel A5020 softswitch, with enterprise H.323 PBXs from Alcatel, Cisco and Nortel. The Acme Packet session border controllers are handily addressing the critical security concerns, including access control and network topology hiding, as well as assuring SLAs via bandwidth based admission control. Thanks to the service reach features in the Net-Net products, including overlapping address support using VLANs and H.323 vendor interworking, Telenor is offering VoIP services to customers utilizing dedicated VPNs as well as connecting with previously incompatible networks, such as those using different versions and configurations of H.323.

"Telenor selected Acme Packet for this high profile VoIP launch because the Net-Net products provide the security, service reach, and scalability required for a successful enterprise VoIP offering," commented Arne Vartdal, technical director telephony in Telenor Business Norway and continues: "Acme Packet's strong customer support, overall responsiveness, and experience with the world's largest service providers certainly contributed to our decision to select their session border controllers for this strategic service offering."

---In a separate release---

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Acme Packet(R) today introduced Net-SAFE(TM) (Session Aware Filtering and Enforcement), a comprehensive security requirements framework for session border controllers (SBCs). In addition, Acme Packet announced three new enhanced security features - enhanced SBC DoS self-protection against signaling attacks, a hardware acceleration module for TLS and IPSec, and SIP privacy support - to the existing set of Net-SAFE features in Acme Packet's Net-Net(R) products. Overall, Acme Packet's security capabilities set the industry benchmark for session border controller security functionality.

"The session border controller is in a unique position to defend the service provider's infrastructure from attack and overload, since it provides the first point of communication and defense at the edge of the network," declared Seamus Hourihan, Acme Packet's VP of Product Management & Marketing. "While Acme Packet's products have always provided advanced security features in many areas, today's announcements will significantly raise the bar for session border control security services."

Acme Packet