COLUMBIA ENERGY CHOOSES VIVATO TO OFFER WIRELESS SERVICES IN RURAL WASHINGTON
Vivato's Extended Coverage Wi-Fi Systems Cover a 3,700 Square Mile Area in Washington State; Enable Rural America to Experience Wireless Broadband

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - August 23, 2004 - Vivato, a cellular Wi-Fi systems infrastructure company, today announced that Columbia Energy, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Columbia Rural Electric Association (REA) has deployed six Vivato™ 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi base stations and several Vivato micro and pico cells in Walla Walla, Columbia and Umatilla counties to provide wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) services in rural Washington where broadband Internet access is currently not available. Having wireless broadband service will create an open, community communications system that will enable people living in those counties to have real-time connectivity and communications capabilities for everyday applications, and provide agriculture and electric utility customers with high-speed broadband to more efficiently and cost effectively access and retrieve critical data, such as SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) and automated meter reading data.

Columbia Rural Electric Association (REA), an electric cooperative serving Walla Walla, Columbia and Umatilla Counties, worked with Vivato and OneEighty Networks, a Pacific Northwest leading facilities-based Internet and telecommunications provider, to provide wireless broadband Internet access to the rural Washington community and to its agriculture and utility customers. In rural Washington, as with other rural communities, high-speed Internet access, such as cable and DSL, is widely unavailable. With Vivato's Wi-Fi base stations, which provide up to 2.5 miles of wireless coverage outdoors, and Vivato's Wi-Fi micro and pico cells for shorter ranges, customers can now access the Internet at broadband speeds. Vivato's product suite provides complete Wi-Fi coverage in large area deployments where conventional Wi-Fi technologies would be cost prohibitive.

"Constructing a wireless network covering 3,700 square miles is a challenging proposition, given the immense coverage area," said Tom Husted, chief executive officer of Columbia REA. "With Vivato's base station and micro and pico cell solution, we are able to provide up to 20 miles of wireless coverage outdoors - this enabled us to deliver a cost-effective wireless broadband service to our greater community - including residential home users, our rural farm customers, as well as our large, irrigated agriculture and commercial customers. For Columbia REA, the 24x7 availability of Wi-Fi facilitates increased productivity and improved management of our agricultural and electric utility applications."

Using conventional Wi-Fi technologies in a large area wireless deployment presents significant capital expenditures - both in the number of access points required to cover the area and, more dramatically, in the costs required to complete trenching for electricity and Ethernet backhaul to each access point.

"Broadband access in rural communities is analogous to Roosevelt's New Deal in 1935 that pushed electricity to rural America. Rural electric utilities view technology as the Holy Grail of agriculture," said Jim Sueuga, manager of marketing and member services at Columbia REA. "Farmers are under increasing pressure to run their businesses more efficiently and having real-time, wireless access to data on pivots, pumps, water stations, and moisture monitoring will enable them to better compete in today's global marketplace."

"The Columbia REA deployment is another prime example of the value that Vivato provides in extended coverage Wi-Fi deployments using our cellular Wi-Fi architecture," said Kevin Ryan, vice president of marketing and business development at Vivato. "The Vivato base stations combined with micro and pico cells provide Wi-Fi coverage to rural communities at a dramatically lower total cost of ownership than a traditional Wi-Fi access point deployment, enabling wireless broadband Internet access to communities and areas that are typically underserved."

About Columbia Energy
Columbia Energy, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Columbia REA, which was formed in 2000 to offer non-core services to customers within the Columbia REA service area. Columbia REA is a non-profit member-owned electric cooperative. Columbia REA has over 3800 customers in Walla Walla, Columbia and Umatilla Counties. They operate an electric distribution system that covers over 3000 square miles. For more information about Columbia REA visit www.columbiarea.com

About Vivato
Vivato is a wireless systems infrastructure company with technology that is based upon an innovative signal processing and antenna design. Vivato's unique system architecture enables cost-effective, large-scale indoor and outdoor wireless deployments at hotels, airports, seaports, warehouses, universities, enterprises, and in cities and towns. Vivato is headquartered in San Francisco, with a research and development center in Spokane, Wash. For more information, please visit www.vivato.com or call 415.495.1111.

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