MSP-H8 Media Gateway™ Announced
Board Offers the OEM the Ultimate in Low-Density Economy

For Immediate Release

Los Angeles, March 5, 2000 - Commetrex announced at CT Expo Spring 2000, today, the open-communications industry's first board to support seamless host-based signal processing for 2-8-line communications systems. Commetrex’ MSP-H8 Media Gateway™ is an 8-line, analog PCI board which leverages OpenMedia's™ hardware independence to lower the cost of media resources in low-port-count systems by putting unused host-PC MIPS to work.

Commetrex' CTO Cliff Schornak and the principal author of the MSP Consortium's M.100 recommendation explains: "M.100 and OpenMedia provide hardware independence and support multiple execution environments. When developing OpenMedia for our MSP-320 Media Gateway, with 3,200 MIPS of DSP processing, we began with the host-based execution environment because of its ease of development. Then the DSP guys began using it to debug their code on the host. It was then that we realized the cost reductions possible for small systems by providing a board with only the trunk interfaces that would move PCM streams to and from the host PC. Moreover, with pluggable interfaces and per-port licensing, the MSP-H8 gives even greater cost reductions for systems requiring less than 8 lines."

The board is available with a board-level developer's kit for those wanting a high-precision 8-line PCM interface. The base board, capable of supporting up to 8 analog trunks, is priced at $395.00. Line interfaces and media-processing licenses are optional. With discounts, the cost per port of a voice-fax configuration is $142.00 per line.

"We believe the MSP-H8, in combination with OpenMedia's exclusive "Any Media Anytime" technology, gives the system integrator the ultimate in media flexibility and economy," adds Mike Coffee, Commetrex’ president.

The MSP Consortium
The MSP Consortium was founded in the third quarter of 1997 by seven companies to develop and distribute a new computer telephony value-adding interface specification called the Media Stream Processor (MSP). The MSP is defined in the Consortium’s M.100 specification of an open environment for media-processing firmware. The Consortium’s objective is to add a new layer to computer telephony’s value-adding structure at the system-resource level. The specification is creating a new competitive space by finally separating fixed-function "boards", such as "fax board" and "voice boards" into two value-adding layers: the hardware resource with its MSP-compliant software environment and the media-processing software, such as voice processing or the fax modems.

For more information on the MSP Consortium, visit www.msp.org.

Commetrex Corporation
Commetrex Corporation, known for its innovations in fax technology, has recently developed the open-communications industry's first platform for system development that supports the industry's two primary standards for open-system environments: the MSP Consortium M.100 software environment for media integration and the ECTF S.100 software environment for application integration. Both products are available with the company's MSP Media Gateway product line featuring the Texas Instruments TMS320C6000 family of DSPs. The MSP Media Gateway products support voice, fax, high-speed data, VoIP and FoIP. Commetrex also extends its support of the communications system developer to the media-processing algorithm level, and is an active participant in Texas Intsturment's Third Party Developer Network.

Note to editors - Product pictures and electronic images are available from Commetrex on request.