Metalink Expands Into Korea

SEOUL and YAKUM, Israel -- Metalink Ltd. (Nasdaq: MTLK - News), a leading provider of high performance VDSL silicon chipsets, today announced that the company has opened a local office in Seoul, Korea. The opening of the office in Korea is part of Metalink's global strategy to be physically closer to high-growth broadband markets and provide its customers with rapid technical support. Metalink's office in Korea will also promote business development opportunities with local telecommunication and networking equipment makers, and telecommunication service providers.

"Korea remains broadband's petri dish, cultivating some of the most interesting activity and players, led by KT," according to RHK Inc. "As of late May 2003, 5.3 of Korea's 15.3 million households subscribed to KT's broadband services; 730,000 of them subscribed to VDSL service. In Korea, a 1 Mbps download rate is considered a slow connection (90 percent of subscribers have over 1 Mbps actual throughput). Beyond the numbers, KT is involved in HomeMedia, the world's first and probably most promising large-scale deployment (i.e., by a major carrier) of video on demand (MPEG2) by using either HFCs or copper access lines."

"Metalink's chipsets have become the solution of choice for DSLAM and CPE vendors worldwide, and particularly in Korea, which has the highest DSL penetration in the world," said Mr. Ronen Avron, Metalink's Vice President of World Wide Sales. "The opening of Metalink's Korean office is an important step toward positioning our regional sales and business development activities closer to our customers, and demonstrates our strong commitment to a long-term presence in strategically important markets."

The Country Manager of Metalink's office in Korea will be Mr. Jong Min Park, who has over ten years of experience in the Korean DSL market.

Metalink's four-band standard compliant VDSL products, Geryon and Xanthus-II, are now available in production volumes through ten leading Korean telecommunication vendors and are designed to meet 50 Mbps IP-VDSL in real deployment scenarios, according to the specifications of the Korean service providers.

Metalink Ltd.