Las Vegas, New Mexico Citywide Wi-Fi Mesh Network -- Tropos Networks' 500th Customer

The latest win for Tropos Networks is its selection by Las Vegas, New Mexico to deploy its MetroMesh system in the city for public safety use, bringing the total number of Tropos customers to 500. The milestone caps a banner 2006 for the company in which the Tropos' Q4CY05 to Q4CY06 node shipments grew by more than 120% -- faster than the overall market.

Tropos expects rapid industry and company growth to continue in 2007 as digital lifestyle and mobile workforce requirements fuel demand for ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage in cities around the world. Also in 2007, according to a company statement, Tropos expects to significantly enhance its industry-leading mesh routing and management software, and to expand the range of radios and spectrum supported in its pico-cell mesh systems.

"Tropos registered significant growth and completed important deployments in 2006," said Ron Sege, president and CEO of Tropos Networks. "We completed large, very sophisticated multi-user deployments such as Corpus Christi and demonstrated that citywide networks could be rolled out quickly, completing a 23 square mile system for Kite Networks in Longmont, Colorado in less than 12 weeks. We added many new top tier cities to our customer roster, and installed networks for major domestic and international carriers such as EMBARQ, Frontier and British Telecom. As we look ahead to 2007, we anticipate a year of even faster growth with major milestones such as the completion of the Philadelphia and Anaheim networks. We will introduce new innovations in our MetroMesh technology and applications, Internet mobility and partnerships that will continue to drive the market."

New Customers, Vibrant Growth
In 2006, Tropos added more than 200 new customers including: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Rock Hill, South Carolina; Southaven, Mississippi; Pasadena, California; and Rome, Georgia. In total, Tropos has garnered more than 500 customers.

Tropos expects the vibrant market growth to continue. According to Muniwireless, the number of planned but not yet deployed municipal Wi-Fi networks grew from 59 in February 2006 to 135 in September 2006. St. Paul, Minnesota; Houston, Texas; Denver, Colorado; San Antonio, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois and a host of smaller cities have issued RFPs for the construction of metro-scale Wi-Fi networks where the winners have yet to be announced. Based on this information, Tropos expects the metro-scale Wi-Fi market to at least double in 2007.

Network utilization statistics reported by the Tropos Insight analysis and control system, along with subscriber satisfaction surveys, show that Tropos networks are highly utilized and well received by end users. Those statistics reveal that in a 10 to 15 square mile city, Tropos typically sees 20% to 25% household penetration (on par with DSL plus cable broadband penetration), 1,550 steady daily users, and an average of 2,640 users per week. These users generally download, in aggregate, more than 100 GBytes per day (that's the equivalent of 1 million typical web pages, or 25,000 typical mp3 files, per day). In addition, user surveys show that 70% or more of the respondents typically rate the network service as good to excellent, a percentage that compares favorably to cellular telephony.