October 3, 2001

VoiceAge Wideband Solution Selected by ETSI/3GPP as Core Technology for Next Generation Telecom

Montreal-based firm associated with, first-ever, wideband low bitrate voice compression standard applied to UMTS/3G era

Montreal, October 3, 2001 — VoiceAge Corporation of Montreal today announced that its wideband voice compression solution has been chosen as the core technology to be integrated in the AMR WB standard for next generation telecommunications platforms by a grouping of regional standardization bodies called 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project). This organization, which regroups six regional standardization bodies from around the world, was created in an effort to develop optimal interoperability regardless of geographical location.

Redwan Salami, Vice President Research and Development, and one of the inventors of the ACELP® technology, commented today's announcement: "We anticipate our wideband technology to be the core qualitative audio improvement of next generation networks, it will be like migrating from AM to FM radio. Coupled with the much anticipated results from ITU-T, VoiceAge's technology is bound to become the first voice compression technology to be standardized in both wireless and wireline platforms, therefore redefining the concept of interoperability", concluded Mr. Salami.
"After some hesitation and arduous testing, we are starting to see the first deployments of 3G across the world", said Carles Ferreiro, Mobile Communications Program Leader at Frost and Sullivan. "Deployments of UMTS/3G services in Japan and Europe will provide specific insights on ways to tap this potentially very lucrative market. In the US, 3G technologies are expected to be widely accepted, especially due to the advantages in voice capacity and clarity, and should reach 137 million subscribers by 2007".

About 3GPP www.3GPP.org

3GPP was created in an effort to regroup into one global reach entity six regional telecom standardization bodies. Uniting Europe's ETSI, North America's TIA, Japan's ARIB and TTC, China's CWTS and Korea's TTA, 3GPP aims at optimizing worldwide interoperability for the 3G era.

About VoiceAge

VoiceAge Corporation develops narrowband and wideband low bit-rate audio and multimedia compression solutions for wireless 2G, 2.5G, 3G, and voice-over-packet networks. As experienced daily by hundreds of millions of users worldwide, VoiceAge's standard and proprietary solutions, built on the world-renowned ACELP® technology, ensure unsurpassed multimedia experience. VoiceAge was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. VoiceAge, SPOTxde and ACELP are trademarks of VoiceAge Corporation. For more information about VoiceAge, visit www.voiceage.com.