Pronto Networks Announces Two New Hires in Asia-Pacific


Expansion Fueled by Recent Closing of $11.3 Million in Series B Funding


BANGALORE, INDIA ? March 11, 2004 ?/Wi-Fi Technology News/- Pronto Networks, a leading provider of carrier-class OSS solutions for large Wi-Fi hotspot networks, announced two new additions to its management team in the Asia-Pacific region.

Paramjit ?Param? Singh Puri has been named the general manager for the SAARC region with additional interim responsibility for South Asia and Mangesh Kolhatkar as the director of solutions marketing. Both will work from Pronto?s Bangalore, India, office and will initially focus on the company?s expansion to India and other South Asian countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

Over the previous year, the Asia-Pacific region witnessed extraordinary growth of public WLAN hotspot deployments. According to UK-based consultancy BWCS, the number of hotspots in the Asia-Pacific region grew from around 2,000 at the close of 2002 to more than 21,300 hotspots by the end of 2003.

?The recent funding addition will enable Pronto to more aggressively target the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific public WLAN market, which will only serve as the beginning of our global expansion efforts over the coming year,? said Jasbir Singh, president and CEO of Pronto Networks. ?And given Param?s and Mangesh?s extensive knowledge of, and expertise in, the global technology industry, we are pleased to welcome them to the Pronto Networks team.?

Puri joins Pronto Networks with more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry, particularly in marketing and sales strategy, business development and general management. Prior to joining Pronto, he managed his own management-consulting firm, providing counsel on corporate strategy and international marketing services for the Asia-Pacific markets to software companies in India.

Puri also previously held senior-level marketing positions for companies such as Epson India, Siemens Nixdorf and AT&T.
Kolhatkar has more than 12 years of experience working with leading global technology companies, primarily in the networking industry, focusing on marketing, strategy, customer relations, and business development. Most recently, he served as director of marketing at Copper Mountain, a provider of broadband networking solutions, and has previously held senior-level marketing positions at CoSine and Nortel Networks. He holds a Master?s degree in Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

About Pronto Networks
Pronto Networks, based in Pleasanton, Calif., provides carrier-class Operations Support Systems (OSS) that enable network operators to deploy and manage large public hot spot networks. The company?s software handles provisioning, configuration, authentication, access control, security, pre-paid and post-paid billing, and roaming settlement for large public WLAN networks, in addition to remotely managing and updating multi-vendor hardware and Wi-Fi switches. Pronto Networks is funded by BV Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the Intel Communications Fund. In 2003, Pronto Networks received several awards including Wired Magazine?s Top 25 Wi-Fi Companies to Watch, the AlwaysOn list of Top 100 Private Companies, and Computerworld?s Innovative Technology Awards.

For more information about Pronto Networks, please visit http://www.prontonetworks.com.

For more information, please contact:
Anurag Mehrotra / Mahathi Parashuram Kristie Heins
Genesis Public Relations Ruder-Finn, Inc.
080 ? 25589122- 24 (312) 329-3985
mparashuram@genesispr.com heinsk@ruderfinn.com