December 14, 2000

Openet Wins Major Contract With Esat Business

Dublin, Thursday, 14th December 2000 - Irish software company Openet Telecom has been selected to supply ESAT Business with business infrastructure software and billing mediation solutions.

ESAT Business replaced its existing legacy system with Openet's innovative FusionWorks software platform. With FusionWorks ESAT Business can rapidly accelerate its time to market for creating new revenue generating services over its network.

"One of the key challenges that faces our business is the ability to rollout services fast, reliably and effectively," said Denis Cronin (Billing Development Manager, ESAT Business). "As we operate in a rapidly changing market we needed an intelligent solution that can adapt to any business scenario that may arise. Openet's recognised expertise in mediation convinced us that they were the best partner for this challenge."

Openet's FusionWorks convergent mediation platform integrates voice, IP and data traffic from the network providing a scaleable, one vendor architecture for addressing the operators changing business infrastructure requirements. "ESAT Business's aggressive infrastructure plans and customer centric business requirements demanded a future-proof solution which would meet their growing business needs, FusionWorks provides that solution," said Stuart Kelly, VP Sales of Openet Telecom.

"The timeframe was critical," added Denis Cronin. "We approached Openet in July and the project went live within ten weeks. The scale of the venture combined with Openet's knowledge was a testimony to the company's reputation as a market leader."

About Openet Telecom

Openet Telecom is an independent telecommunications software company that provides data mediation solutions and provisioning for the diverse telecommunications networks of this and the next generation. Openet's flagship product FusionWorks™ is a high performance convergent mediation platform that unifies customer usage patterns from legacy network infrastructure, IP Networks, and 3G Wireless Networks, including WAP, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS. Its architecture is designed to maximize the strategic value of a CSP's Business Support System, and accelerate the rollout of value added services across its network in a scalable and flexible manner. Openet empowers winning CSPs with true 3G convergence - a unified, real-time view of a more satisfied customer, consolidated billing for all value-added services, increased revenue streams, and a speed to market never before attainable. For more information visit us at www.openet-telecom.com.

About Esat Business

Esat Business is a division of the Esat Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of British Telecom. The Esat Group has a total of 2,200 employees and comprises three divisions in total: Esat Business, Esat Digifone and Esat Fusion.

Esat Business includes all of the company's services in voice, data, Internet and network management available to the business market, and offers end-to-end managed solutions and e-Business services.

The company is currently the leading provider of broadband data and corporate Internet solutions and has 2,900 kms of national broadband fibre cable with metropolitan networks in over thirty urban areas including Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Shannon and Galway. This network also links into the BT and AT&T global network. The company is in the process of rolling out Broadband Wireless Local Loop technology to extend its customer reach. For more information on Esat Business, please visit www.esat.com.