VIVATO ANNOUNCES LATEST DOMESTIC MUNICIPAL DEPLOYMENT WITH LOS LUNAS, NEW MEXICO
Los Lunas Expects Savings of Nearly 80 Percent Using Vivato’s Unique Two-tier Approach to Extended Range Wi-Fi

SAN MATEO, Calif. – January 18, 2005 – Vivato, a scalable, extended range Wi-Fi systems infrastructure company, today announced Los Lunas, New Mexico has deployed its unique approach to Wi-Fi networking, joining a growing list of municipalities that are bringing broadband access to municipal employees and their communities as a whole. All deployments highlight Vivato’s unique two-tier architecture that reduces capital and operational costs to typically one-half to one-third that of alternative solutions. Los Lunas in particular expects to save 80 percent in operating costs compared to alternative solutions, as well as easier deployment and network management.

With a population of more than 10,000 in an area that spans 10 square miles, Los Lunas (www.loslunasnm.gov), county seat of Valencia County, lies primarily on the west bank of the Rio Grande, 30 minutes south of downtown Albuquerque. The land was originally part of the San Clemente Grant, granted to Don Felix Candelaria in 1716. Historically, Los Lunas was a farming community, but since the 1960s, the village has become a growing business center that includes a major retail distribution center, metals manufacturing company, and cabinet manufacturing plant.

“After reviewing a number of wireless solutions, we selected Vivato because of its standards-based approach, which allows the public and municipal employees to communicate with readily available and inexpensive devices such as laptop computers, VoIP (Voice over IP, or Internet) phones, and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants),” said Marty Callahan, technical specialist, Village of Los Lunas. “In addition, Vivato’s extended range system requires a fraction of the transmission sites of alternative technologies, resulting in easier deployment and management of the network, and substantial cost reductions over our current communications network. We expect a savings of nearly 80 percent compared to what we were paying in the past, while simultaneously providing Los Lunas employees and the public more convenient service than they have ever had.”

Among the applications that Los Lunas is currently or plans to support over the Vivato network are monitoring of municipal infrastructure, building permitting, emergency response, and public safety. In addition, the city is providing network access to the public for both residential and business users. “We were particularly impressed with the ability to segregate municipal from public applications over the Vivato network,” added Callahan.

The Vivato network will play a significant role in Los Lunas’ public safety applications. Traditional police radio dispatch will be replaced with computer aided dispatch (CAD), reducing the amount of radio traffic. In addition, police officers will be able to look up license registrations directly from the laptops in their vehicles, in real-time, as they assess situations before engaging in them. Officer location and status will be handled from squad car laptops, speeding up the whole process and allowing officers to spend more time being visible on the street. The Los Lunas Fire Department will enjoy similar benefits, including access to building location and layout maps through the Wi-Fi network, which will allow them to appear on the scene more quickly.

Los Lunas has also tested the VoIP capability that is inherent in Vivato’s technology, with the intention of substituting the Internet for traditional telephone networks. It plans to cut its cellular phone costs by more than half, by using Wi-Fi enabled cellular devices and a “soft phone” to make and receive calls using a Private Branch Exchange, or PBX. When not in range of the Wi-Fi system, devices will work over the existing cellular network. In addition, Los Lunas is working with VoIP service providers to allow home phone services over the Wi-Fi system.

Vivato’s unique phased array antenna design greatly extends the reach of industry standard 802.11b and 802.11g signals, enabling standard Wi-Fi clients to communicate over much greater distances. In addition, Vivato’s technology enables Wi-Fi communications in demanding environments with multiple other networks and users operating in the same area. Vivato’s systems approach and family of products, including base stations, micro cells, and pico cells, allow customers to optimize network design for cost, bandwidth and coverage and offer the lowest total cost of ownership among competing technologies.

In addition to municipalities, other target markets benefiting from Vivato’s unique approach include higher education, rural communities, government, warehouses, sea and airports, and large public venues such as arenas and sports stadiums.

“Los Lunas is another example of a forward-thinking municipality that is using Vivato to bridge the digital divide and provide unique services and benefits to the community that, in many cases, cannot be found in cities several times their size,” said Chris DeMarche, senior vice president of marketing and business development, Vivato. “Through our focus on providing innovative solutions to select vertical markets like municipalities, we are able to deliver the services that communities like Los Lunas need to grow and thrive, while simultaneously realizing tremendous cost savings over traditional broadband alternatives.”

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 Mateo, California, with a research and development center in Spokane, Washington. For more information, please visit www.vivato.com or call 650-227-0490.