Ridgeway Teams with California’s Imperial County of Education offering Distance Learning Opportunities For Remote Schools

August 26, 2002

West Long Branch, NJ — August 26, 2002 Ridgeway Systems & Software, Inc., the world’s leading provider of boundary traversal solutions for IP voice and video, has partnered with the Imperial County of Education to deploy their ambitious distance learning initiative, the BorderLink Project. BorderLink provides equal educational opportunities for all schools across its rural district via IP video conferencing. Ridgeway’s new class of patent-pending software, IP Freedom, enables seamless and secure point-to-point IP voice and video conferencing by securely traversing network firewalls and NATs.

“We are extending out a gigabit backbone to all school districts in our county,” said Alan Phillips, Video Conferencing Specialist for The BorderLink Project at the Imperial County Office of Education in Southwest California. “When we started to deploy IP video, we ran into network security issues. In our situation, not only were we dealing with our own firewalls, but the firewalls of 16 school districts. We are building a community-based network that includes education, government, hospitals, police and fire. We needed a solution that solved this problem very quickly and easily– Ridgeway did this.”

“It is a privilege to contribute to the BorderLink Project,” said Gene Wolf, Ridgeway’s President and CEO. “Alan and his team are truly at the forefront in their deployment and usage of IP video conferencing. In addition to their regularly scheduled video conferencing education sessions, the ICOE team uses their IP video network to extend virtual field trips,” said Wolf. “ I am honored that Ridgeway is a part of this unique solution for our children.”

About IP Freedom

IP Freedom supports both SIP and H.323 protocols, extending the reach of secure, real-time, end-to-end IP video and voice beyond the confines of the today’s private IP network or backbone. Most notably, the Ridgeway solution enables seamless connectivity without any compromise of security or the overall integrity of the end-to-end connection.

About Ridgeway Systems & Software

Ridgeway is a privately-held company, currently deploying patent-pending software products, IPFreedom, VoiceFreedom, and VideoFreedom, that enable IP Voice and Video traffic to seamlessly and securely traverse through all of the various desktop to desktop firewalls and NATs, through the boundaries of multiple private and public networks, and through the global internet — extending and enabling the untapped demand for end-to end, any-to-any, real-time, interactive, IP Video Conferencing and Voice Communications. We bring IP Voice and Video to Main Street.

Ridgeway is headquartered in Oceanport, New Jersey with operational offices in Austin, TX, Atlanta, Georgia and Reading, England.

Visit the Ridgeway web site at www.ridgewaysystems.com

Contact:

Nancy Leonard

Ridgeway Systems & Software

nleonard@ridgewaysystems.com

+1.732.483.9126