Ansoft Launches Altra Broadband Inc.

PITTSBURGH, July 17 -- Ansoft Corporation announced today that it has formed a new company, Altra Broadband Inc., to pursue the development of critical intellectual property and products for broadband wireless and optical communications. Altra Broadband will develop components and sub-systems for broadband wireless and optical networking based on a proprietary new technology, SPWD (Spin Polarized Wave Division).

The co-inventors of the SPWD technology Dr. Lawrence Williams and Mr. P. Premkumar have been named to lead the new venture. Mr. P. Premkumar was named the President and CEO of Altra Broadband, while Dr. Williams has been appointed as the new company's Vice President of Technology.

Mr. Nick Csendes, President and CEO of Ansoft, said, ``This innovation offers the potential to create networking products that dramatically increase the bandwidth and capacity of large-scale data networks. We believe that launching a separate company offers the best avenue to quickly and effectively realize the potential value of this new technology.'' He added, ``As the majority shareholder in the new venture, Ansoft employees and shareholders will directly benefit from the value created by Altra Broadband.''

SPWD is a core technology and architecture for multiplexing large amounts of digital data over existing wireless and fiber-optic channels. By piggy-backing over other multiplexing and multiple-access schemes like DWDM, CDMA, and GSM the new technology serves to multiply and accelerate rather than replace other technologies. Altra Broadband will announce additional details on SPWD and derivative technologies as well as product roadmaps during the coming weeks and months.

Mr. P. Premkumar, President and CEO of Altra Broadband said, ``Companies like Lucent, Qualcomm, Ciena, and Nokia employ wavelength or frequency division to create multiple channels over a single medium. Our technology helps them multiply the quantity of data on each channel by exploiting several spin states in each wavelength or frequency.'' He added, ``Over the next five years, the combined effect will lead to an explosion of bandwidth and speed in digital communication networks.''

Ansoft is a leading developer of high performance EDA software. Ansoft software is used by engineers to design state of the art technology products, such as cellular phones, internet networking equipment, satellites, computer chips and circuit boards, electronic sensors and electric motors. Ansoft markets its products through its own direct worldwide sales force, and has comprehensive customer support offices throughout North America, Asia and Europe.

Except for historical information, the matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations or beliefs and are subject to factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. For a detailed discussion of these and other cautionary statements, please refer to Ansoft's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.