Today at CTIA in Las Vegas, NextPoint, a leader in fixed-mobile connectivity solutions, announced it has added significant new mobility-enabling features to its Integrated Border Gateway (IBG) product suite, originally announced in 2007 as the industry's first product consolidating best-of-breed Session Border Controller capabilities with the market-leading Security Gateway.

Currently, widely deployed IP Wi-Fi access networks support nomadic communications but not true mobility. NextPoint's IBG includes an IP Mobility Suite that provides Packet Data Interworking Function (PDIF) to support Code Division Multiple Access-based operators and Tunnel Termination Gateway (TTG) for Global System for Mobile- and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System-based operators - enabling true mobility for users roaming between multiple IP networks. PDIF and TTG deliver that true IP mobility, by providing an efficient, scalable mechanism for seamlessly and securely moving sessions from one access network to another while maintaining persistence.

The company is demonstrating the mobility-enabled IBG this week at CTIA Wireless.

NextPoint Enhances Integrated Border Gateway, Adding Industry-leading Mobility Features Including Packet Data Interworking Function and Tunnel Termination Gateway

NextPoint Adds Packet Data Interworking Functionality (PDIF) and Tunnel Termination Gateway (TTG) at Extremely High Scale Delivered Over Flexible Blade Platforms

CTIA Wireless 2008, Las Vegas, NV; Gaithersburg, MD - April 1, 2008 - NextPoint™, a leader in fixed-mobile connectivity (FMC) solutions, today announced it has added significant new mobility-enabling features to its Integrated Border Gateway (IBG) product suite, bringing combined or distributed edge-to-edge IP session management solutions to fixed and mobile operators. The company, already in lab trials with Tier One operators in North America, Europe and Asia, will demonstrate the mobility-enabled IBG at CTIA Wireless 2008 in Las Vegas.

NextPoint's IBG, which was announced to the market in 2007 as the industry's first product consolidating best-of-breed Session Border Controller (SBC) capabilities with the market-leading Security Gateway (SeGW), now includes an IP Mobility Suite that provides Packet Data Interworking Function (PDIF) to support Code Division Multiple Access or CDMA-based operators and Tunnel Termination Gateway (TTG) for Global System for Mobile (GSM)- and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)-based operators. With this functionality, NextPoint enables true mobility for users roaming between multiple IP networks. The PDIF and TTG IP Mobility Suite will provide for delivery of voice and data "combinational" services to mobile IP users, ensuring subscribers' continuity experience across IP networks for both sessions and data.

NextPoint now offers three versions of the IBG. One version provides a single-component security gateway while a second version integrates intelligent session management capabilities. These two versions provide intelligent edge solutions to mobile and fixed-line operators' to address their requirements for management and implementation of network elements from access edge to network core. With the availability of the newest version of the IBG, which now incorporates PDIF and TTG, NextPoint supports operators' rollout of mobile services today while anticipating operators' network evolution as they continue to create enriched voice, data, and multimedia services in an all-IP mobile environment.

"We are proud to be first to market again," said Mark Pugerude, Chief Marketing Officer of NextPoint, "delivering a proven, high-scale IP mobility solution that enables operators to interconnect their fixed and mobile networks to support voice, data and multimedia sessions while securely connecting with other operators' networks to optimize coverage and performance. The mobility-enabled Integrated Border Gateway is an investment protection strategy - a way for operators to future-proof their networks to deliver converged FMC and IMS solutions. Our vision has always been to mobilize the IBG to be in lock-step with the network evolution that we have seen working alongside Tier One operators in the lab and in concert with our partners. We look forward to putting the IBG's PDIF and TTG mobility-enabling technologies into large production network deployments by the end of this year."

"As subscribers become more demanding, wanting near-perfect voice, data, or multimedia experiences, service providers are pushed to invest in fixed mobile convergence solutions that allow for the seamless handoff of voice and data throughout their networks," said Joe McGarvey, principal analyst for Current Analysis. "How and where convergence is achieved will determine the winners and losers in this race. By integrating PDIF and TTG within one product, NextPoint allows service providers to support widely deployed WLAN and WiMAX applications. They can also better scale to converge their WLAN and mobile networks and truly migrate to a converged core network."

As part of NextPoint's FMC solutions, which enable seamless handoff of voice and data across service providers' networks, PDIF is applied to CDMA mobile networks for interworking wireless local area network (WLAN) deployments, including Wi-Fi and Femtocell applications, as well as WiMAX deployments. TTG - a subset of the Packet Data Gateway (PDG) specification - is applied to UMTS networks for inter-worked WLAN or WiMAX deployments. PDIF and TTG rely upon and enhance the security gateway to protect resources and packet data services from unauthorized access.

Currently, widely deployed IP Wi-Fi access networks support nomadic communications but not true mobility. PDIF and TTG deliver that true IP mobility, by providing an efficient, scalable mechanism for seamlessly and securely moving sessions from one access network to another while maintaining persistence. Quality of Service (QoS) supported in PDIF and TTG enables operators to provide differentiated treatment for different voice, data and multimedia applications.

The IBG expands the NextPoint IntelliConnect ® system to enable NextPoint's customers to seamlessly transition to Next Generation Network (NGN) architecture and roll out "anytime, anywhere, on any device" multimedia and data services to their subscribers. The mobility-enhanced IBG is being delivered on the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) blade platform and will support hundreds of thousands of IPsec tunnels and subscribers per blade.

NextPoint's participation in comprehensive lab trials for well over a year with Tier One operators and third-party interoperating partners has demonstrated that the IBG, built as a best-in-class platform, is a highly scalable and available solution. Provided in a distributed architecture, the IBG enables mobile operators to tackle 3G, WLAN, and WiMAX challenges today while they proactively design their NGN architectures to deliver more seamless mobility-centric services to their demanding subscriber bases. The IBG can be deployed in small integrated or distributed solutions, and in larger solutions both at the network edge and in the core using a combination of blades developed specifically to accelerate and enhance future network architectures being rolled out by large operators.

Benefits of NextPoint's mobility-enabled IBG include:

• Carrier-class robustness, scale, redundancy, and fault tolerance
• Enablement of combinational services that use both SIP sessions and web/data transport - e.g., voice with web or video with web-based gaming
• Robust security that includes transport level encryption and authentication, session-level security, and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology
• Key component of 3GPP/3GPP2, TISPAN, Multi Service Switching Forum and other network architectures
• Mobile IP tunnel establishment at unmatched scale, with session throughput enabled in the hundreds of thousands under load for modular, scaled support of small to very large network systems
• High availability with subsecond failover
• Intelligent, per-flow based QoS for millions of flows using DPI
• Comprehensive element management capabilities for ready integration into service provider networks
• Best-in-breed solution set with seamless integration of any third-party platform that supports standard DIAMETER or H.248 protocols
• Provision of a fully managed solution
• Performance without degradation to traffic and processing loading
• Integrated and seamless policy management and execution

Target applications for IBG deployment include but are not limited to Femtocell-based service rollout, Voice over Broadband, Voice over WiMax/Wi-Fi, secure access and interconnect peering and IMS-based service deployments.

About NextPoint

NextPoint Networks (www.nextpointnetworks.com) delivers global, fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) border platforms and secure interconnectivity solutions that enable mobile and fixed-line operators to interoperate. NextPoint's technology platform, products and solution suites address the evolving needs of mobile and fixed-line operators for increasing security and intelligence at the network edge by delivering secure voice, data and multimedia over a scalable platform. Over 550 service providers and enterprises worldwide use NextPoint's IntelliConnect system across multiple, diverse network technologies and operating systems to manage technical complexities, optimize business economics, and remove partnership hurdles.

Visit NextPoint at CTIA Wireless 2008 in room S230.