MARCATEL EXPANDS ENHANCED SERVICES OFFERINGS
WITH APEX VOICE COMMUNICATIONS

Mexican Carrier Rolls-Out Prepaid, Voice Mail,
Voice-Activated Dialing and Conferencing

WOODLAND HILLS, CA, May 12, 2005 – APEX Voice Communications, a leading supplier of enhanced multi-services platforms, today announced that Marcatel, a primary provider of integrated communications services in Mexico, has expanded its enhanced services offerings by installing OmniVox^® AES.  Deployed by carriers, service providers, enterprises and developers worldwide, OmniVox AES is being used by Marcatel to deliver prepaid, voice mail, voice-activated dialing and conferencing services to its users.

“With the OmniVox AES solution from APEX, we are expecting our revenues to grow significantly over the next three years,” said Carlos Montemayor, CEO of Marcatel.  “The new services we are offering demonstrate our continued commitment to our customers, by providing them with the types of services which they can benefit from the most.”

The first phase of the expansion was the replacement of the Siemen’s IN-based prepaid platform with the APEX Billing Systems (ABS) module of OmniVox AES.  With its unique ability to run both prepaid and postpaid services on a single platform, Marcatel is delivering prepaid calling cards and postpaid travel cards on one ABS.  Additionally, to save both operator and switch resources, users can automatically recharge their prepaid calling cards by calling into the system and using their credit card.  ABS is a carrier-class solution scalable to hundreds of millions of minutes per month in either a centralized or distributed architecture, in either an IP or TDM/PSTN-based network.

To increase customer loyalty among their prepaid calling card users, as well as their existing Internet users, Marcatel has also deployed the APEX Messaging Systems (AMS) module of OmniVox AES.  For prepaid calling card users, AMS ties a voice mailbox to a prepaid calling card, giving those with no mobile telephone or static landline a voice mailbox.  Additionally, these users have the ability to listen to their voice messages via e-mail by using the unified messaging feature of AMS.  Internet users also have the option to sign-up for voice mailboxes, as they will be offered either a prepaid calling card or a travel card.

 “We are delighted to have another world-class carrier with the reputation of Marcatel become a partner and user of our solutions,” said Fabio Tylim, Vice President of sales for the Americas for APEX Voice Communications.  “With OmniVox AES and its graphical service creation environment, Marcatel is able to rapidly develop and deploy an unlimited number of services, securing its leading position in the industry.”

Voice activated dialing and business conferencing are two more services offered by Marcatel on OmniVox AES.  Prepaid calling and travel card users have the option to speak predefined words or numbers to call a list of contacts.  Users can speak words such as “mama” (mom) or “casa” (home) and OmniVox AES, via the APEX Speech Recognizer module, will interpret the word and “speed dial” the number associated with the spoken word.  The APEX Business Conferencing module gives users the ability to create conferences using either their prepaid calling or travel card.  The conference coordinator can choose to pay for the entire conference with their (prepaid calling or travel) card, or have each conference attendee pay for their own portion with their own (prepaid calling or travel) card.  To create a conference, the coordinator simply logs on to Marcatel’s conferencing webpage, which was also developed by APEX.