Dear Friends…Happy New Year…

This is an envious position to be in for me to write this message. In year 2003 smartBridges has gone from strength to strength and become a dominant player in the Wide Area Wireless Networking industry. The demand for smartBridges products has surged at an explosive rate. We introduced several new products and worked harder to ensure carrier-class reliability. Our customers recognized the efforts, innovation, customer support and our willingness to listen and rewarded us with the Wireless Manufacturer of the Year award. We are grateful to all of you.

Our company has become profitable and completely debt free. Every time when we tally up, it just simply amazes me to look at the large number of pure smartBridges WISP networks deployed around the world.

While responding to the high demand for our products, admittedly, we did make some mistakes on the supply chain planning and the product quality aspects. But on the upside, I believe that we have learned from these mistakes and emerged as a stronger organization.

We have been involved in many projects in the developing countries to help bridge the digital divide. Our involvement has already helped to bring the benefits of wireless technology to the people living in many far flung regions around the world. I must say that working on such projects has been an enriching experience. We are expanding these efforts and are in the process of establishing the smartBridges Foundation to reach out and support many more such projects. The complete list of accomplishments is long and I am very proud of my team’s efforts.

Looking to the future… we see tremendous opportunities in the Wide Area Wireless Networking market. We are not only well positioned to address them all, but are also looking forward to using our past year’s performance as a springboard to leap forward. We will keep our feet on the pedal and plan to triple our revenue in 2004. We will accelerate the pace of product innovation and focus on advanced networking technologies that seamlessly stitch together different RF bands. We will broaden our product portfolio to enable deployments of very large scale ISM band wireless infrastructure, thus enabling people to access information anytime, anywhere.

Thank you for your support and we look forward to work with you. We hope that our products and solutions will continue to earn their value proposition with you.

With warm regards,

Nimesh Parikh
CEO

“RioSat Rules in Rural Spain with smartBridges”

For Mark Newland, the lack of interest by the national telephone carrier to provide broadband internet access to rural communities was a welcome development. He saw in it an opportunity and started his venture, RioSat. RioSat is a Wireless Internet Service Provider that provides broadband Internet services in remote areas of southern Spain.

Kay Newland and Mark Newland from RioSat, Spain

RioSat is located approximately 480 kilometers (300 miles) south of Madrid near the village of Riogordo. This village is home to about 2,800 habitants. Previously, people living in Riogordo were only able to access the Internet via GPRS or satellite ground installations. The connection via GPRS was slow and expensive. Satellite connection, though fast, was expensive again. Today, thanks to RioSat, the people in Riogordo are enjoying both fast and cheap Internet access.

RioSat provides the Internet access with satellite ground stations in strategic locations. Together with smartBridges wireless networking devices, solar panels, wind turbines, power generators and antennas, RioSat’s network provides bandwidth to many Internet users in the vicinity. The longest access point link spans about 6 km horizontally and about 600 meters vertically. All villages have direct line of sight of up to 15 km from the Base and Relay stations.

The wireless Internet access is not only good news for the Spanish residents, but also for the thousands of International travelers who visit Riogordo for the Semana Santa (Easter Week). The travelers and villagers would able be to regularly communicate within and beyond Riogordo, quickly and cost effectively.

Mark, Director of RioSat, explained: “The people in rural Spain can now access the Internet wirelessly at a fraction of the cost. This new infrastructure opens up a lot of new businesses opportunities in this region. There are hundreds of potential users within the range of our first two base stations and thousands more along the coastal interior of southern Spain. With the help of smartBridges and their exemplary technical support team, we plan to build more base stations in nearby localities. We look forward to working with smartBridges for a long time to come.”

Technical Details …

“The first commercial shipment of airPoint XO leaves smartBridges”

After months of grueling in-house testing, smartBridges is pleased to announce the first commercial shipment of the airPoint XO.

The airPoint XO offers four key benefits of vital importance to any Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN). These are subscriber bandwidth management, carrier class reliability, flexible mode configurations and advanced networking capabilities.

Bandwidth Management is the most powerful feature of the airPoint XO. It enables Wireless ISPs (WISPs) to increase their Return on Investment (ROI) and provide a high Quality of Service (QoS) to their customers. Bandwidth management allows the WISPs to allocate bandwidth according to the needs of individual Internet subscribers. So, subscribers only pay for Internet connection speeds that they want and use. With Bandwidth management, WISPs can assume greater control of their networks and improve performance. It also reduces problems like heavy downloading from single users, network congestion and poor network responsiveness. With so many powerful benefits, isn’t it spot on to refer the airPoint XO series as the Xtra Ordinary (XO) access points?

Bandwidth Management Capabilities of the airPoint XO

Packed inside a rugged, weather proof, NEMA4X casing, the airPoint XO delivers superior carrier class reliability making it ideal for outdoor installations. The airPoint XO is compliant with regulatory requirements and is powered by IEEE 802.3af-compliant Power over Ethernet (PoE) Outdoor device.

These superior features could be made possible only due to the dedication and proven capabilities of the smartBridges R&D team and the stringent testing by our beta testers.

Pradeep Victor, Software Project Leader for smartBridges, said: "We did intensive testing of our software to ensure stability and reliability. The airPoint XO is designed to simplify wireless network management. The graphical user interface makes the navigation, examination, and management of the airPoint XO extremely intuitive. I would like to thank all the beta test contributors for carrying out such rigorous tests to ensure we have an easy-to-deploy and easy-to-maintain product."

For more details, visit http://www.smartbridges.com/new/products/apxo.php

You can download the brochure at http://www.smartbridges.com/pdf/brochure_apxo.pdf

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