Phone Power Bypasses Class 4 Switching with Acme Packet

Acme Packet®, Inc. (NASDAQ: APKT), the leader in session border control solutions, today announced that Phone Power LLC, a growing VoIP service provider to the U.S. and Canadian markets, has deployed Acme Packet’s Net-Net® 4500 session border controllers (SBCs) as part of a highly scalable SIP routing solution that eliminates the need for Class 4 softswitches in their network. The SBCs are also used by Phone Power at its access borders to secure and extend the reach of its hosted VoIP services to a greater number of business and residential customers. By leveraging the broad scope of functionality delivered by the Net-Net SBC, Phone Power believes it can achieve double-digit revenue growth in 2010 and beyond.

Phone Power is a next-generation telecommunications company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. A privately-owned company founded in 2005, they provide telecommunications service to the continental U.S. and Canada, with all customer service based in the U.S. Phone Power offers a broad diversity of services ranging from single-line residential voice to corporate contact centers. Phone Power’s retail products are available nationwide through retailers such as Best Buy and Fry’s.

To avoid using expensive Class 4 switches to route calls, Phone Power employs Acme Packet’s Open Session Routing (OSR) architecture, leveraging the high-capacity, high-performance SIP session routing capability of the Net-Net 4500 SBC. The versatility of OSR is enabling Phone Power to quickly enter new markets with services designed to help the company meet their goals for revenue growth over the next eight quarters.

To ensure that Phone Power meets or exceeds service level agreement assurance goals, the Net-Net SBCs are configured to statefully load-balance SIP sessions across Phone Power’s array of voice application servers. The load-balancing design also optimizes each server’s utilization, resulting in capex savings for Phone Power. Call detail records for each session are sent from the Net-Net SBC to an internal platform for mediation, rating and reporting. The real-time reports include quality-of-service measurements by destination, and can automatically remove destinations from the routing table when their quality-of-service falls below preset thresholds.

Phone Power additionally uses Acme Packet to protect its subscribers against toll fraud, an increasingly frequent type of VoIP attack that is often cited as perhaps the most significant and costliest threat to VoIP services today. Phone Power is mitigating the threat of toll fraud in its network by having the Net-Net SBC monitor all active sessions, operating in conjunction with Phone Power’s proprietary heuristics engine to identify and proactively disconnect potentially fraudulent calls.

"We chose the Net-Net 4500 platform primarily because of the enormous access-side growth we are experiencing,” said Jim Murphy, Managing Partner at Phone Power. "Acme Packet’s field-proven SBC feature set, along with its flexibility and ability to scale will contribute to that growth while helping us to keep costs in check.”

"By choosing next-generation, IP-based approaches over traditional Class 4 switching, competitive service providers like Phone Power are becoming a viable alternative to incumbent providers,” said Seamus Hourihan, Acme Packet’s vice president of marketing and product management. "Acme Packet’s OSR architecture provides the necessary capabilities for service providers to deliver trusted, first-class SIP-based services.”

About Acme Packet

Acme Packet, Inc. (NASDAQ: APKT), the leader in session border control solutions, enables the delivery of trusted, first-class interactive communications—voice, video and multimedia sessions—and data services across IP network borders. Our Net-Net family of session border controllers, multiservice security gateways and session routing proxies supports multiple applications in service provider, enterprise and contact center networks—from VoIP trunking to hosted enterprise and residential services to fixed-mobile convergence. They satisfy critical security, service assurance and regulatory requirements in wireline, cable and wireless networks; and support multiple protocols—SIP, H.323, MGCP/NCS, H.248 and RTSP—and multiple border points—service provider access and interconnect, and enterprise access and trunking. Our products have been selected by 910 customers in 100 countries. They include 48 of the top 50, and 90 of the top 100 service providers in the world; and 8 of the Fortune 25. For more information, contact us at +1 781.328.4400, or visit www.acmepacket.com.

Acme Packet, Inc. Safe Harbor Statement

Statements contained herein that are not historical fact may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such forward-looking statements may relate, among other things, the ability to facilitate service and support and to secure large enterprise networks, as well as Acme Packet’s expected range and reach into new markets and its relationships with new customers, distributions channel and product partners. Such forward-looking statements do not constitute guarantees of future performance and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These include, but are not limited to: difficulties expanding its customer base; difficulties leveraging market opportunities; difficulties providing solutions that meet the needs of customers; poor product sales; long sales cycles; difficulty developing new products; difficulty in relationships with vendors and partners; difficulties in integrating an acquired business; higher risk in international operations; difficulty managing rapid growth; difficulty managing its financial performance; its ability to hire and retain employees and appropriately staff its operations; the spending of the proceeds of its capital raising activities; its cash needs; and the impact of new accounting pronouncements and increased competition. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or suggested in any forward-looking statements are contained in the Company’s recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those factors discussed under the caption "Risk Factors” in such filings.