GigaBeam and Tropos have successfully installed portions of the muni WiFi network in Mountain View, CA

September 13, 2006

3 Min Read

HERNDON, Va. -- GigaBeam Corporation (NASDAQ:GGBM) and Tropos Networks jointly announced today that GigaBeam has become a preferred solution partner of Tropos and that both have successfully installed portions of the municipal WiFi network in Mountain View, CA, with GigaBeam installing WiFiber(R) wireless fiber for the backhaul, and Tropos installing its MetroMesh(TM) WiFi product for the WiFi mesh.

Ron Sege, President and CEO of Tropos Networks, said, "We are excited to be working with GigaBeam, the global leader in 70-80 GHz technology. Their 1 Gbps WiFiber throughput substantially increases the capacity of a WiFi mesh network, enabling service providers to deliver multi-megabit services and support bandwidth intensive applications for a very large number of subscribers on a metro scale. Also, being a wireless solution, it can be deployed faster, more economically and to more locations than terrestrial fiber. We look forward to working with GigaBeam to deliver fiber-grade connectivity to our customers' MetroMesh networks worldwide."

Lou Slaughter, GigaBeam's Chairman and CEO, stated, "We are delighted to be a preferred partner of Tropos, the leading provider of meshed WiFi networks in the US and globally. Our current WiFiber product, offering 1 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) transport and backhaul, ensures robust network integrity in any meshed network. Unlike lower speed microwave technologies, our higher speed technology is more suitable for carrying and distributing data, VoIP and video capacity across WiFi networks. We and Tropos have found that to be precisely the case in the Mountain View network, where the addition of our WiFiber product substantially improved the capacity of the overall meshed WiFi network. We look forward to working with Tropos in the US and globally."

GigaBeam WiFiber products operate in the 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz radio spectrum bands. This portion of the radio frequency spectrum has been authorized by the Federal Communications Commission for wireless point-to-point commercial use. Use of these frequency bands for commercial use was pioneered by GigaBeam's founders.

GigaBeam's technology, utilizing these large blocks of authorized contiguous spectrum, enables multi-Gigabit-per-second communications through use of Gigabit Ethernet and other standard protocols. The current speed achieved by GigaBeam's WiFiber G-1.25 product series is full duplex at one Gigabit-per-second (equivalent to 647 T1 lines or 1,000 DSL connections) which supports GigE protocol. GigaBeam recently announced its WiFiber G-2.7 series, to be released this year, which will operate at 2.7 Gbps. The protocols to be supported by the G-2.7 product series include 2 x GigE (2 x 1 Gbps); OC-48 / STM-16 (2.488 Gbps); SMPTE 292M (1.485 Gbps) and both 1 and 2 Gbps fiber channel. GigaBeam also plans deployment of future products capable of 10 Gigabits-per-second utilizing either the 10 Gigabit Ethernet or OC-192 protocol standards.

GigaBeam's WiFiber technology is similar to terrestrial fiber in terms of speed and reliability for deployment in Metropolitan Area Networks (MANS). However, WiFiber has a substantial advantage over terrestrial fiber because WiFiber can be deployed in a day and costs less to deploy than terrestrial fiber. Terrestrial fiber can take months to deploy and also require significant regulatory and environmental approvals prior to installation.

The patented Tropos MetroMesh architecture delivers the maximum scalability, high capacity at low cost and great user experience demanded by carriers, municipalities and network users. The MetroMesh architecture combines the industry's most sophisticated metro-scale mesh routing intelligence with carrier-grade tools for centralized visibility, analysis and control and purpose-built hardware platforms with peerless Wi-Fi radio performance. MetroMesh enables carriers, municipalities and public safety agencies to deliver city-wide fixed and mobile multi-megabit connectivity for IP-based voice, video and data applications.

GigaBeam Corp. (OTC: GGBM)

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