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Technology Leaders Demonstrate First User-Friendly Mobile TV Broadcast Service in U.S. - Penthera Introduces End-to-End Mobile TV Software System

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

Penthera Technologies, Inc. today unveiled its Virtual Set Top Box(TM) software system, offering a user-friendly interface to mobile TV broadcast services.

Penthera's flagship product, Athena-TV(TM), was demonstrated at CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2005 in conjunction with technology from Crown Castle Mobile Media, a subsidiary of Crown Castle International (NYSE:CCI); Intel Corporation and DiBcom in the first U.S. public demonstration of mobile TV broadcast reception on multiple platforms.

"Anyone who's used digital cable or satellite TV will be at home using Athena-TV," said Sam Leinhardt, CEO of Penthera. "Our focus is on flattening the learning curve. We start from the assumption that people have watched TV, but never on a mobile device."

"Mobile broadcast is the next phase in the continuing convergence of the mobile and media industries," said Gary Forni, Director of Software Enabling, Cellular and Handheld Group, Intel Corporation. "What we demonstrated today is both cutting edge and at the same time totally familiar: a living-room TV experience on Intel XScale technology mobile computing devices."

In the live demo, a continuous flow of live, brand-name TV services was beamed from terrestrial transmitters to mobile devices using the DVB-H protocol. Intel provided the client platforms: an Intel(R) Centrino(R) mobile technology-based laptop and an Intel XScale(R) technology-based PDA. Crown Castle Mobile Media, a subsidiary of Crown Castle International, provided the broadcast network, L-band transmitters, real-time content aggregation and media encoding at its southwestern Pennsylvania network operations center. DiBcom, a fabless semiconductor designer of high-performance chipsets for digital broadcast, provided the DVB-H receiver components.

Penthera's Athena-TV software system provided the user interface: channel changing capabilities, "grid views" and "detailed views" of upcoming programming. Athena-TV is an end-to-end solution comprising robust, configurable head-end server components and a multi-platform client. It is an IPDC-over-DVB-H solution that complies with the DVB-CBMS and Nokia OAI specifications for mobile broadcast. Designed specifically for the resource-limited environment of a mobile device, Athena-TV supports a wide range of operating systems including the Microsoft Windows(TM) family; Symbian/S60; Linux, and multiple processing platforms including Intel's XScale and Pentium-M/Centrino.

DVB-H is expected to become the global standard for mobile television and has been formally adopted by both the DVB Organization and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Global telecom research firm, Informa Telecoms & Media, estimates that by 2010, nearly 51 million DVB-H handsets will be sold worldwide.

About Penthera (www.penthera.com)

Penthera is a privately-held company providing a complete software solution for mobile broadcast including middleware and application-level software on the broadcast head-end and on handheld devices. Founded in 2005, Penthera's executive team previously founded and operated Eizel Technologies, Inc., a Carnegie Mellon University spin-out which built mobile web and email connectivity software. Eizel was acquired by Nokia in 2003. Penthera is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

About Crown Castle Mobile Media (www.crowncastle.com)

Crown Castle Mobile Media is a subsidiary of Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI). Crown Castle engineers, deploys, owns and operates technologically advanced shared wireless infrastructure, including extensive networks of towers. Crown Castle offers significant wireless communications coverage to 68 of the top 100 U.S. markets and to substantially all of the Australian population. Crown Castle owns, operates and manages over 10,600 and over 1,300 wireless communication sites in the U.S. and Australia, respectively.

Crown Castle Mobile Media intends to build and operate a dedicated DVB-H network for broadcasting digital television content to mobile devices including cell phones. The proposed network will utilize five megahertz (MHz) of unencumbered nationwide spectrum acquired by Crown Castle through Federal Communications Commission Auction 46 in 2003.

About DiBcom

DiBcom is a fabless semiconductor company that designs high-performance chipsets used at the heart of mobile broadcast digital TV as well as in automotive, PC/peripheral and handheld device applications. DiBcom has developed patented algorithms and architecture for fast and accurate channel estimation and high Doppler compensation that enable low-power portable TV reception everywhere and provide "Proven Performance" at speeds exceeding 100 mph.

Statements contained in this new release regarding the growth of the mobile DTV handset market, each company's respective market penetration and qualification of products and other statements of management's beliefs, goals and expectations may be considered forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. The following factors and the factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements contained in this press release: actual market demand for mobile DTV products in general and demand for each company's products specifically, and actual certification test results relating to each company's products. Each company disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.

Source: Business Wire

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