Alcatel-Lucent Solidifies Market and Technical Leadership in Mobile Backhaul

LAS VEGAS, April 1, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alcatel-Lucent today highlighted its leadership in the mobile backhaul market and unveiled further enhancements to its Mobile Evolution Transport Architecture (META), the industry's first and most comprehensive architecture for profitably evolving mobile networks from TDM to all-IP. With new advanced microwave packet, optical and IP capabilities, as well as strong customer momentum - including 10 new contracts in the past 6 months --, Alcatel-Lucent has extended its leadership in the mobile backhaul market and offers mobile operators quick-to-market end-to-end solutions.

With $19.6 billion spent in 2006 on leased lines to backhaul wireless services according to Infonetics*, mobile operators are feeling the pain of expensive backhaul costs, which for larger operators can amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year. At the same time, they need to upgrade their bandwidth capabilities to support new, advanced multimedia applications, such as delivering video content with enough quality to make it worth watching - and paying for. The business challenge is to manage this in a financially profitable way.

To best meet the challenge, Alcatel-Lucent brings new capabilities to its META architecture by introducing to the North American market its 9500 Microwave Packet Radio (MPR), the industry's first all-IP microwave transport platform. This cell site aggregation product flexibly aggregates packet-based and Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) traffic to provide optimized bandwidth backhaul capabilities over a common transport layer.

"With the ramp up of data traffic caused by rapidly growing customer demand for new multimedia services, mobile operators face a major challenge," said Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent's IP activities. "META provides our customers with a staged evolution to an all-IP infrastructure while significantly reducing the complexity and cost of their transport network. As importantly, META helps operators lay the groundwork for the introduction of 4G services, and the even greater bandwidth demands the next generation of multimedia services will generate."

META supports the most diverse set of transport alternatives to enable the evolution to all-IP across any media (copper, fiber, wireless). META also provides for dramatic network simplification with integrated management across fixed and mobile technology domains delivering significant operating expense (OPEX) reductions of as much as 44%**. META bridges the bandwidth and revenue gap, enabling providers to increase ARPU in the face of rapid subscriber growth.

At the CTIA Wireless 2008 Tradeshow and Exhibition, Alcatel-Lucent is demonstrating mobile backhaul over a combination of fiber, copper and microwave technologies, an industry first. Specific demonstrations include:

-- The Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS-5 with circuit emulation capabilities allowing mobile operators to cost effectively backhaul TDM traffic over a packet infrastructure; -- The Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS-3 supporting Ethernet backhaul. This is a cost-effective Ethernet CPE device supporting Ethernet over a combination of TDM/PDH or Ethernet interfaces; -- The Alcatel-Lucent 7330 ISAM FTTN providing DSL backhaul in support of the BSR Femto demonstration; -- The Alcatel-Lucent 9500 Microwave Packet Radio and MDR 8000 carrying live video traffic. Service quality is also demonstrated by varying the RF signal on the microwave packet equipment and seeing its impact on the video traffic being streamed; -- The Alcatel-Lucent 7705 Service Aggregation Router, 7450 Ethernet Service Switch, and the 7750 Service Router (SR) will be on display in the equipment gallery, and will be part of 2G and 3G mobile traffic transport public demonstrations. The 7750 SR and 7710 SR are now available with multi-layer switching and edge routing capabilities dramatically reducing required CDMA backhaul network elements (from eight network elements to two); -- A service aware management presentation that highlights the robust service management tools that service providers can leverage to simplify OAM&P of the mobile transport network.

Alcatel-Lucent is also participating in the public multi-vendor Mobile Backhaul Interoperability showcase organized by the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) and supported by both the IP/MPLS Forum and the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF). Involving 15 vendors and more than 85 devices, the live test demonstrates how existing and next-generation mobile services, as well as business services, can be delivered over access, metro and core networks that use diverse transport technologies, including IP, MPLS and T-MPLS, to address fixed and mobile operators' multiple requirements.

More than 150 mobile operators have recognized Alcatel-Lucent's leadership in mobile transport evolution, including recently-announced customers such as France's SFR, Japan's Softbank Mobile, Turkey's Avea, Brasil Telecom, Vodafone Spain, Cellular South in the US, Korea's SK Telecom, Vietnam's VNPT, Morocco's WANA and Yemen's MTN.

About Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) provides solutions that enable service providers, enterprise and governments worldwide, to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. As a leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent offers the end-to-end solutions that enable compelling communications services for people at home, at work and on the move. With operations in more than 130 countries, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The company has the most experienced global services team in the industry, and one of the largest research, technology and innovation organizations in the telecommunications industry. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 17.8 billion in 2007 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/

* Source: Mobile Backhaul Equipment, Installed Base, and Services - Infonetics Research, April 2007. ** Source: Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Business Case 2007. About the EANTC

The European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) offers vendor-neutral consultancy and test facilities for network equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprise customers. Primary business areas include interoperability, conformance, and performance testing for IP/MPLS, Carrier Ethernet and Triple Play technologies and applications. For more information contact Carsten Rossenhovel, Managing Director, at +49.30.3180595-0 or via e- mail at cross@eantc.com.

About the IP / MPLS Forum

The IP / MPLS Forum is an international, industry-wide, non-profit association of service providers, equipment vendors and enterprise users. The focus of the Forum is to drive global adoption of IP/MPLS based technology, networks, services and solutions. The Forum is driving the convergence of ATM, Frame Relay and IP/MPLS technologies in the global telecom industry through implementation agreements educational and marketing resources and programs as well as interoperability initiatives. For Forum membership information please contact Alexa Morris, Executive Director, at (510) 492-4057 or via e-mail at amorris@ipmplsforum.org. Additional information about IP / MPLS Forum is available online at http://www.ipmplsforum.org/ .

About the Metro Ethernet Forum

MEF is a global industry alliance comprising more than 135 organizations including telecommunications service providers, cable MSOs, network equipment/software manufacturers, semiconductors vendors and testing organizations. The MEF's mission is to accelerate the worldwide adoption of Carrier-class Ethernet networks and services. The MEF develops Carrier Ethernet technical specifications and implementation agreements to promote interoperability and deployment of Carrier Ethernet worldwide.

For more information about the Forum, including a complete listing of all current MEF members, please visit the MEF web site at http://www.metroethernetforum.org/