UNITEL LAUNCHES UNIQUE NEW ATM SERVICE IN CANADA

First Service to Support ATM To Frame Relay Interworking on a Single
Platform

TORONTO, ONTARIO -- January 29, 1996 -- StrataCom, Inc. announced today
that Unitel Communications, Inc. has selected and will standardize on its
ATM equipment for the first ATM service in Canada to offer frame relay and
ATM service interworking. The new service will allow Unitel's customers to
more efficiently transport multiple traffic types across a single
integrated platform and provides a more robust infrastructure to support
Unitel's frame relay business, which is growing at an annual rate of
200-300 percent.

The new network will be fully interoperable with AT&T's InterSpan" frame
relay network, which currently supports more than 40 percent of the frame
relay traffic in the U.S., according to Vertical Systems Group, a market
research firm. Both the Unitel network and AT&T's InterSpan frame relay
network are based on StrataCom's cell-based ATM platform. Additionally,
the Unitel ATM network will be a key component of the Canadian
government's CANARIE project, its nationwide research and development
communications infrastructure.

By supporting interworking between all of its services, Unitel will be able
to offer its customers support for a broad range of ATM-enabled
applications, including multimedia for voice, imaging and video, as well
as low-speed services, such as frame relay. Unlike other ATM offerings in
Canada, Unitel's StrataCom network is the only cell- based platform that
can offer incremental growth for these lower speed applications, while
providing a path for implementing higher- speed broadband ATM services.

"In Canada, the real growth of ATM is not from broadband ATM," said John
Piercy, vice president, marketing for Unitel, "but rather the more
traditional low-speed services, such as frame relay and SNA traffic. The
ability to run frame relay over a cell-based ATM backbone allows us to
meet this customer demand for low-speed traffic in the most
cost-effective, bandwidth-efficient and reliable manner possible."

"According to market research estimates, low-speed frame relay and LAN data
traffic currently comprise more than 85 percent of all wide area traffic
in Canada," Jim Grimes, regional manager for StrataCom in Canada, added.
"With StrataCom's BPX ATM platform, Unitel is now able to seamlessly
integrate this traffic onto an ATM- based network fabric."

NETWORK DETAILS

As part of the agreement, Unitel will install StrataCom BPX switches in
Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa and Edmonton. Additional BPX switches
are planned for deployment throughout 1996 and beyond in order to serve
the growing requirements of Unitel's customer base.

Unitel already relies on more than 20 StrataCom IPX cell-based frame relay
switches as the WAN backbone for its nationwide DataVPN data network,
which supports over 200 business users across Canada.

"The addition of the BPX ATM switches to our existing IPX network is a
strong validation of our decision to standardize on a cell-based platform
for all of our service offerings," commented Piercy.

CUSTOMER DEMAND

Canadian businesses and financial, government, medical, and educational
institutions are looking toward ATM as a network backbone capable of
cost-effectively carrying higher speed data traffic and supporting new,
emerging multimedia applications, including imaging, video-conferencing,
as well as research and development.

One of the first users of the new Unitel network is the University of
Calgary Mechanical Engineering Department.

"In addition to supporting all of our research traffic on one integrated
platform, Unitel's new ATM service, with its seamless network interface to
AT&T's InterSpan service, gave us the opportunity to demonstrate our
research findings throughout all of North America," said Professor Luc
Bauwens, University of Calgary.

EXPERTISE IN CELL SWITCHING - ATM PIONEERS

StrataCom has more than 10 years of experience building cell-based switches
and has led the industry in the development of cell switching since the
company's formation. StrataCom is an active member of the ATM Forum, an
industry organization working to develop standards for the new
technology.

UNITEL

Unitel Communications, Inc. is Canada's national facilities-based
telecommunications carrier offering business and residential callers a
variety of products and services for long-distance voice communications,
as well as data and message services. VISIT UNITEL Communications' home
page at http://www.unitel.com.

STRATACOM, INC.

StrataCom, Inc., (NASD:STRM), based in San Jose, California, USA, develops,
delivers and supports FastPacket networking systems for multiband ATM
applications in private wide area networks and public carrier service
offerings, such as frame relay and ATM. StrataCom's family of products,
including FastPAD, EdgeConnect, IPX", IGX, BPX, and AXIS, is used to
integrate and transport a wide variety of corporate information, including
voice, data, video, LANs, image and multimedia traffic in narrowband to
broadband ATM network applications. Visit StrataCom's home page at
http://www.stratacom.com.

LEGAL NOTE: The forward-looking statements in this release should be read
together with materials regarding product development in StrataCom's 10K
and 10Q reports, available from StrataCom.
 
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