MILPITAS, Calif. -- Jim Kleinsmith has joined Big Bear Networks as vice president of sales. He is the first to hold the position at the two-year-old provider of subassembly-level products for optical networking equipment. Reporting to Big Bear CEO Mark Thompson, Kleinsmith is responsible for worldwide sales and business development of products based on the company's recently introduced Photronic Signal Processing (PSP) technology. PSP overcomes the impairments that degrade data-transmission signals over fiber-optic links, enabling telecom carriers to deploy longer and faster fiber links with minimum capital and operational expenditure. Kleinsmith has more than 20 years of experience in the optical, switching, transmission and data communication fields. He comes to Big Bear Networks from broadband telecommunications carrier Aevia Communications, where he had been vice president of sales and business development. Big Bear CEO Mark Thompson said, "Jim has worked extensively with both the vendors who develop optical equipment and the carriers who use that equipment. Having been where Big Bear's customers are, he is in an ideal position to help them recognize the tremendous impact that our approach of embedding intelligence into the optical physical layer can have at the system and network level." Big Bear Networks