Vovida Networks Teams with Equivalence to Expedite Free Open H.323 Stack

 
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Strategic Alliance Expects Summer Availability of Open H.323 Stack on Linux and Win32

San Jose, California -- May 27, 1999 -- Vovida Networks, Inc., a privately held, multinational, San Jose based corporation focused on creating value by delivering converged voice, video, and data solutions, and Equivalence Pty Limited, an Australian based company focused on supplying high quality software and network solutions to the Internet, today announced their strategic alliance and the expected summer availability of the Annex F voice component of a free, open source, H.323 stack based upon the Linux operating system and Win32.

This is the beginning of creating real customer value by providing developers around the world usable, open source, non-proprietary building blocks for developing voice, video,
and data products and solutions, said Alan Knitowski, President and CEO of Vovida Networks, Inc. Businesses and customers of all sizes will benefit from reduced product
prices and dramatically improved interoperability of products incorporating the new stack.

Until now, H.323 technology was inaccessible to individuals and small companies due to the high cost of licensing the available proprietary protocol stacks, said Craig Southern,
Managing Director of Equivalence Pty Ltd. By fostering the collaborative development of an Open Source H.323 protocol stack by the Internet community, the OpenH323 project allows
any developer to be part of this rapidly growing segment of Internet technology.

Funded by Vovida Networks, Equivalence and others, Equivalence is heading the OpenH323 Project. The aim of the OpenH323 Project is to facilitate the creation an open source H.323 protocol implementation by coordinating the efforts of interested individuals and companies. Once this preliminary implementation is commercially available, it can easily form the basis of an entire family of open source Internet conferencing and telephony products.

This announcement coincides and supports the April VON (Voice On the Net) announcement made by Vovida Networks regarding the formation of an open source development consortium. In addition to supporting open source H.323 and MGCP, Vovida Networks is equally committed to delivering open source implementations of both SIP (Session Initiation
Protocol) and RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol).

H.323 is the name for a suite of protocols used by Internet telephony products, and has been selected by all of the major telcos as one of the protocols to be used for the
future of Internet telephony. Open source implementationsbenefit the entire industry by allowing all users access to a common software code base. As a part of the open source
model, software developers around the world will be able to contribute to the enhancement and development of these protocol stacks, which will then increase their usability,
quality and interoperability. In line with the model of the increasingly popular Linux operating system, the source code will be available for download via the Internet free of
charge. This will be a significant deviation from today's environment where the current suppliers of proprietary protocol stack implementations charge both recurring licensing and royalty fees.

For further information regarding Open H.323, please visit the website at openh323.org.

For further information regarding Equivalence, please visit the companys website at www.equival.com.au, or call its corporate headquarters in New South Wales, Australia at +61 2-4368-2118.

For further information regarding Vovida Networks, visit the companys website at www.vovida.com, or call its corporate headquarters in San Jose, California at (408) 941-1790.