New York, NY, August 2, 2006 — Fine Point Technologies, a leader in broadband network connectivity management, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Q Inc, an emerging leader in the network quality monitoring industry. The move will significantly extend the capabilities of Fine Point’s broadband deployment and provisioning solutions by integrating Q’s quality of experience (QoE) agent and management software. The strategic value of the acquisition to both companies will be further emphasized when Fine Point announces a multimillion dollar deal featuring Q-Agent with a major US wireless carrier later this year.

Todd R. Ruelle, Fine Point Chairman & CEO, said, “This is an exciting opportunity for both companies and our customers. Fine Point and Q’s products share a focus on increasing user satisfaction, reducing churn and driving down user care costs for service providers. Adding Q’s unprecedented insight into network quality and user experience to our best-in-class subscriber lifecycle management solutions provides our customers with a powerful feature set. Together our products allow service providers to maximize the profitability of a broadband network while optimizing their relationship with individual users.”

Added Jeff Lindauer, Q CEO, “Beyond the clear product synergy, we have collaborated extensively with Fine Point over the last two years in areas like business development and marketing. The chemistry between our teams has helped forge an opportunity to further differentiate Fine Point’s solutions and give Q’s products wider distribution and influence in the market. Together we believe we can move service providers closer than ever before to an automated, intervention-free support relationship with customers.” 

Integration of both company’s product families will be centered on core products such as Fine Point’s Self Repair Technician and Q’s Q-Agent. Self Repair Technician manages and self-repairs broadband configuration and connection issues with little involvement from users or customer care call centers. This significantly reduces truck rolls and customer support costs for service providers.

Q-Agent generates QoE metrics from the actual data being consumed by end user devices such as broadband wireless PC cards. Service providers can review and respond to empirical scores for operator-specified protocols including SMTP, POP3, HTTP, FTP, wireless interface protocols and others. New protocols can also be pushed down to already deployed Q-Agents on user devices.

Following the close of the transaction, Q’s products will be available exclusively through Fine Point’s business development team and network of partners. The acquisition will also see several members of Q’s management transition over to Fine Point. In addition, Q CEO Jeff Lindauer will be joining Fine Point’s Board of Directors.

Q develops software that helps communications service providers gain unique insight into their customers’ Quality of Experience (QoE). Q’s flagship product, Q-Agent, offers a multifaceted knowledge base and a quantifiable QoE index that extends down to individual users and protocols. Armed with an entirely new understanding of the user experience, service providers improve customer satisfaction, reduce support costs and streamline product implementation. Q-Agent runs on end user devices such as PCs, wireless data cards, smartphones and set top boxes. Q is headquartered in San Francisco. Additional information can be found at www.q-hq.com.

Molly Scales
Communications Manager
Fine Point Technologies, Inc.
press@finepoint.com
+1.212.962.7410 x301