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FREMONT, Calif., August 31, 2009 - Actelis Networks®, the leading global supplier of Ethernet over copper solutions, today announced it has received “Technical Acceptance” and “Buy American” status from the Rural Utilities Service (“RUS”) branch of the United States Department of Agriculture for the following additional products: ML600 Ethernet Access Devices (EADs), ML2300 next-generation Ethernet aggregation platforms, XR239 EFM Repeaters, and PFU-8 power feeding units, which remotely power Actelis’ XR239 EFM Repeaters. These Actelis products demonstrated compliance to federal regulatory requirements and industry standards, and are now included in the company’s “List of Acceptable” materials. Additionally, all have been accepted under the “Access Equipment” and “Multi-service Access” categories, according to the RUS.

North American carriers can leverage their broadband stimulus dollars and/or use low-interest RUS funds to purchase Actelis’ RUS-listed equipment, which has been designed around the primary mandates of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009: provide service to the highest proportion of rural residents that do not have access to broadband service.

“This new legislation (ARRA) frees up carriers to do more with their networks, to deliver more services and applications than ever before, and to reach more subscribers than they ever thought possible,” said Eric Vallone, vice president of marketing at Actelis Networks. “With our updated RUS listing, we believe it will greatly benefit North American carriers as it allows them to purchase and deploy Actelis products that can quickly and economically deliver on the promise of high-speed ubiquitous broadband services for subscribers in rural America, or those subscribers who have been traditionally out of reach because of their geographic location.”

As operators face rapidly increasing demand for enhanced broadband services, ranging from delivering services to the “unserved” and “underserved” to backhauling IP DSLAMs and cell towers, to even replacing archaic T1 lines for business customers, they need to figure out how to maximize the number of customers they can reach while minimizing costs. Although fiber could, in some cases, deliver these Ethernet-based broadband services, only a limited number of locations that require fiber actually have access to it. Additionally, new fiber installs are occurring very slowly due to extremely high construction costs; therefore, fiber deployments are nearly impossible to justify in this current economic climate as they are counter to the ARRA’s requirement of maximizing customers served per dollar spent.

The savings on infrastructure costs are dramatic, according to Actelis’ Vallone, often as much as 10 times cheaper than fiber, which translates to 10 times more customers served for the same money spent.

“In today’s economic environment, any new investment requires significant justification and a near immediate return on that investment,” commented Vallone. “Operators across North America have proven that the business case for leveraging their existing copper networks is the best way to maximize broadband deployments while minimizing costs.”

Actelis Networks’ RUS-listed products utilize the existing copper infrastructure to deliver high-quality, high-speed Ethernet broadband services to all customer locations, including those beyond 16 Kft. When paired with Actelis’ unique XR239 EFM Repeaters, the industry’s first standards-based and only widely deployed EFM repeater, carriers can even reach customers out to 82 Kft.

The Actelis product family combines high-performance hardware and software, with a simple-to-use, carrier-class Element Management System, MetaASSIST™, to ensure easy deployments and a rapid return on investment. Actelis’ products provide fully standardized Ethernet handoffs, making its Ethernet over copper solutions easily upgradable with future investment protection. Without the need to wait for fiber construction, Actelis’ simplified plug-and-play capabilities allow immediate deployment, enabling service providers to begin delivering broadband services with minimal operational expenditures today.

Delivering exceptional symmetric speeds of more than 15 Mbps per copper pair, Actelis has become the leading global supplier in the fast growing market for Ethernet over copper solutions because of its unwavering commitment to The 3 R’s of EFM: Rate, Reach and Reliability™. The company’s 3 R’s of EFM are the cornerstone of its world-class R&D team, which includes some of the industry’s most innovative scientists who have developed Actelis’ patented and fully standards compliant EFMplus™ technology.