Aware Joins HomeGrid Forum for Home Networking

BEDFORD, Mass., April 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Aware, Inc. (Nasdaq: AWRE), a leading supplier of broadband technology and DSL test and diagnostics solutions, today announced the company's membership in the HomeGrid^™ Forum as a promoter. HomeGrid is a new special interest group which aims to promote and influence a single, next-generation worldwide home networking standard for digital content.

"As a DSL technology provider, Aware has always understood the importance of home networking as a means of extending the access network inside of the home," commented Michael Tzannes, CEO of Aware. "By joining HomeGrid, Aware can leverage its technical, marketing, and standards body expertise and experience to make significant contributions and recommendations to the complementary home networking standards, which will ultimately assist the ITU-T G.hn working group in achieving the performance, coverage and quality- of-service standards necessary to address the maturing global home networking market."

The HomeGrid Forum will be a companion to ITU-T G.hn, supporting the interests of service providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, PC OEMs and other networking companies to create a single MAC and PHY protocol for transporting multimedia across a home's existing wiring to include coaxial cable, power lines and phone lines. HomeGrid Forum is contributing next-generation technology requirements to ITU-T G.hn, quickly developing consensus around one worldwide standard. ITU-T is the standardization sector providing global telecommunication standards in the International Telecommunication Union.

As a leader in communications semiconductor intellectual property, Aware plans to develop a technology offering that it will license to semiconductor companies enabling them to develop standard-compliant ICs in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost that it would take to do it alone. Aware's broadband wireline expertise is ideally suited to overcoming the significant performance, reach, interoperability, and QoS problems that are inherent to home networking. This expertise has been hard-won over more than a decade of specifying, building, qualifying and deploying DSL chipsets in some of the most challenging network conditions worldwide.

"Aware has been a significant technical contributor and has held leadership positions in standards organizations, including the ITU-T and DSL Forum, for more than ten years," Tzannes continued. "We believe that the broad adoption of industry standards is fundamental to the success of emerging technologies and recognize that the time is right for a unified global home-networking standard to enable semiconductor, equipment and service providers to deliver advanced value-added services to the broad marketplace. We are pleased to be part of the group of experts making this a reality."

About Aware

Aware is a leading technology supplier for the telecommunications industries. For more than ten years, Aware has pioneered innovations at telecommunications standards-setting organizations and continues to develop and market DSL silicon intellectual property and test and diagnostics products. Its StratiPHY^™ IP product line supports DSL standards, including ADSL2+ and VDSL2, and has been broadly licensed to leading semiconductor companies. Telecom equipment vendors and phone companies use Aware's DSL test and diagnostics modules and Dr. DSL^® software to help provision DSL circuits globally. Aware is also a veteran of the biometrics industry, providing biometric and imaging software components used in government systems worldwide since 1992. Aware's interoperable, standard-compliant, field-proven imaging products are used in a number of applications, from border management to criminal justice to medical imaging. Aware is a publicly held company (Nasdaq: AWRE) based in Bedford, Massachusetts. www.aware.com

Safe Harbor Warning

Portions of this release contain forward-looking statements regarding future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties, such as estimates or projections of future revenue and earnings and the growth of the DSL market. Aware wishes to caution you that there are factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results indicated by such statements. The DSL factors include, but are not limited to: we have a unique business model, our quarterly results are difficult to predict, our DSL licensing and DSL test and diagnostic businesses depend upon a limited number of customers, we derive a significant amount of revenue from a small number of customers, we depend on equipment companies to incorporate our technology into their products, we face intense competition from other DSL vendors, DSL technology competes with other technologies for broadband access, our business could be harmed if our test and diagnostic hardware and software products have quality problems, we depend on a single source contract manufacturer for the manufacture of our DSL hardware products, our manufacturing systems may not be adequate for our DSL test and diagnostics hardware products, we depend on single source suppliers for components in our DSL hardware products, and our business is subject to rapid technological change. We refer you to the documents Aware files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the section titled Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2007 and other reports and filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Aware, StratiPHY and Dr. DSL are trademarks or registered trademarks of Aware, Inc. Any other trademarks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Aware, Inc.

CONTACT: Sarah LaLiberte of Aware, Inc., +1-781-687-0695,
sarahl@aware.com