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River Radiology Deploys BridgeWave’s Gigabit Wireless Link for Remote Connectivity and Rapid Delivery of Bandwidth-Intensive PACS Files

Santa Clara, CA – February 26, 2008 – BridgeWave Communications, the leading supplier of gigabit wireless solutions, today announced that River Radiology, one of the largest and most technically advanced providers of diagnostic imaging services in New York’s Hudson Valley, has deployed BridgeWave’s AR60 gigabit wireless system to extend its high-speed network while ensuring fast and secure delivery of all-digital Picture Archiving Communications System (PACS) files.

River Radiology sees up to 150 patients daily for a complete range of radiologic services, including bone densitometry, CT scans, digital mammography, MRIs, nuclear medicine, PET scans, ultrasounds and X-rays. After deciding to expand its MRI capabilities to patients at nearby Benedictine Hospital, River Radiology focused on finding a high-speed, secure network link to connect the two imaging centers, which were less than a mile apart. However, only limited and costly options were available from local service providers, including a 45 Mbps landline service, which barely met minimum bandwidth requirements and could take up to 60 days for installation and provisioning.

With assistance from Webjogger, a wireless network solutions provider based in Tivoli, N.Y., River Radiology determined that BridgeWave’s AR60 gigabit wireless product met all its criteria for capacity, security, reliability as well as expedited installation. Once the rooftop was readied, the radio was installed in a single afternoon and link operation has been flawless for the past year.

“Connectivity between the two sites is completely transparent—you can’t tell if an image originated 200 feet down the hall or two miles across town,” says Alice Omichi, IT systems and PACS administrator for River Radiology. “With BridgeWave, we have ample network capacity for at least the next decade, reinforcing River Radiology’s ability to deliver diagnostic services and imaging reports in a timely manner while providing extremely responsive, top-quality patient care.”

The extremely narrow antenna beamwidth on BridgeWave’s GigE wireless link provides enhanced security and interference immunity, while the AR60, with exclusive AdaptRate™ capability, momentarily switches transmission from GigE to 100 Mbps data rates during periods of intense rain downpours to maintain “five nines” network uptime. Ultra-low latency on the BridgeWave link also made possible River Radiology’s addition of VoIP services between the two imaging centers.

According to Mario Pommier, vice president of business development for Webjogger, BridgeWave’s gigabit wireless products are quickly becoming a preferred solution for high-speed connectivity. “In recommending BridgeWave, we can react much faster to our customers’ ever-increasing bandwidth requirements and avoid the high costs, delays and deployment challenges associated with traditional leased-line services,” he says. “We can take advantage of BridgeWave’s products to deliver ‘wireless fiber’ that produces rapid return on investment while proactively anticipating future applications and business growth.“

River Radiology was able to achieve a complete ROI on its BridgeWave gigabit wireless installation in 10 months and the flawless performance already has the practice group contemplating the addition of a new CT scanner at the hospital.

“BridgeWave’s full GigE bandwidth and ultra-low latency performance makes our products ideally suited for applications such as high-resolution imaging,” says Gregg Levin, chief marketing officer for BridgeWave Communications. “Increasingly, healthcare organizations are embracing BridgeWave’s high capacity, secure wireless links for HIPAA-compliant network connections.”

About BridgeWave Communications
Founded in 1999, BridgeWave Communications is the leading supplier of outdoor Gigabit wireless connectivity solutions. The company’s exclusive AdaptRate™ and AdaptPath™ technologies combined with its advanced Forward Error Correction capability deliver the highest availability at the longest distances for full-rate gigabit links. BridgeWave’s point-to-point, wireless solutions are widely deployed in mainstream enterprise and service provider network applications and are poised to play a key role in the migration to 4G mobile network backhaul. With the largest installed base of GigE radios worldwide, BridgeWave delivers the highest levels of product quality and reliability.