Upon completion, expected by early summer 2009, Turkcell will transport a broad suite of premium IP based services with Quality of Service assurances, high-availability, reliability and flexibility.

“The demand for higher bandwidth and interconnectivity is increasing at an extremely fast pace in our rapidly evolving communications marketplace. With the transformation into an “All IP” 3G network, which we believe is the first in Turkey, we will expand the capacity of our existing network to provide national coverage and meet our customer’s demand for 3G services” said Bülent ELÖNÜ, the Transport Network Division Head of Turkcell. “The ease of management and Quality of Service capabilities of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP/MPLS solution enables us to carry our customer’s 3G data traffic over an IP network from day 1”, he added.

“Our advanced IP/MPLS solutions are a key element in Alcatel-Lucent’s global leadership in enabling network transformations as operators around the world are moving to all IP networks,” said Ali Kancal, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities in Turkey and Azerbaijan.

“Our solution will enable Turkcell to enhance the speed at which their customer’s interaction with their 3G experience and creating a competitive differentiation”, he added.

The Marconi Prize is awarded annually to a living scientist whose work in the field of communications and information technology advances the social, economic and cultural improvement of all humanity.

Chraplyvy and Tkach recognized that demand for network capacity was growing exponentially and that nonlinearities inherent in optical transmission would make it virtually impossible to achieve the speeds required to meet that demand. The two scientists realized that previous approaches for increasing transmission efficiency were not sufficient and this realization motivated them to develop novel techniques that would overcome these limitations.

Robert Lucky, chairman of the Marconi Society explained “Andy and Bob developed the concept of dispersion management — and also conceived a new optical fiber type. The effect of these innovations was to enable wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) fiber transmission systems with capacities beyond one Terabit/second per fiber–a 100-fold capacity increase in a mere ten years.”

“Andy and Bob’s groundbreaking research paved the way towards meeting society’s growing need for high bandwidth applications such as telemedicine, enhanced conferencing and other emerging applications,” said Jeong Kim President of Bell Labs. “Andy and Bob exemplify the caliber of people who work at Bell labs and the pre-eminent research they perform,” he added.

Chraplyvy, vice president of optical transport networks research and Tkach, director of transmission systems and networks research, both began their work at Bell Labs in the early 1980’s and have since received many of the industry’s highest honors such as the John Tyndall and the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Awards, have been inducted into National Academy of Engineering and have been named IEEE, Bell Labs and Optical Society of America Fellows. They also hold numerous patents in the areas of lightwave systems and fiber optics.

Alcatel-Lucent Managed Solutions, the first of its kind Managed Network Services joint venture company of Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Reliance Communications (BSE : RCOM), one of India’s largest integrated telecommunications service provider today completes one year. This legal entity was launched in July 2008, as an innovative business model between one of the worlds largest telecom equipment manufacturer and telecom service provider to establish a cost-effective delivery hub for global services business.

“The unique combination of strengths of Alcatel Lucent and Reliance Communications has been among the key drivers for unprecedented growth and quick subscriber ramp up on the Reliance Mobile network”, said Mr. Sandip Biswas, Head of Managed Services, Reliance Communications. “With Reliance Communications holding a 33% equity stake in the Joint Venture, it also offers us significant opportunities to further create value for our many million stakeholders”, he added. Within the first year of operations the Joint Venture has demonstrated its capability to achieve operational cost savings of 20-25%.

To ramp up the operations and lead the new entity – Alcatel-Lucent Managed Solutions appointed John Crossley as CEO. In his role, John will focus on process improvements and business development opportunities, in India and globally. Prior to taking up this assignment John was leading Alcatel-Lucent’s Middle East network operations activities. John has been in the telecom industry for over 30 years.

“We are extremely proud to have this unparalleled partnership with Reliance Communications. Alcatel-Lucent’s recognized expertise in delivering best-in-class services is helping them through the business transformation process while accelerating their operational excellence and increasing customer satisfaction.” said Andy Williams, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s Services activities.

Orange Business Services is consolidating multiple network platforms to increase capacity and enhance the overall flexibility of the network. The upgraded core network strengthens the Orange Business Service delivery of premium business services, including Ethernet, IP virtual private networks and advanced voice over IP services, with the reliability and quality of service that businesses require.

Incorporating the Alcatel-Lucent terabit service routing portfolio into its network has enabled Orange Business Services to provide higher performance to more customers, all with reduced physical footprint. The new IP/MPLS network has improved the service provider’s time to market while reducing operational expenses through the simplification and optimization of the new converged infrastructure.

“Over the past 18 months we’ve continued to invest in the capability and reach of our communications infrastructure, enabling us to provide businesses in France with world-class, scaleable data solutions at competitive rates,” said Didier Duriez, Senior VP International & backbone network factory, Orange Business Services. “Deploying Alcatel-Lucent’s service router solution accelerates our IP network transformation and helps launch new services with higher availability for business critical applications.”

Orange Business Services deployed Alcatel-Lucent’s award-winning IP/MPLS Terabit Service Router portfolio to enhance IP capacity and service flexibility within the network. With the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR, service providers can rely on a new type of cost-optimized, highly-available and feature-rich service delivery infrastructure that can seamlessly scale to address both residential and managed data service market needs. Alcatel-Lucent provided integration and testing services, utilizing the company’s in-depth IP Transformation experience and will continue supporting Orange Business Services network transformation to simplify the network and provide higher capacity, services and reliability while reducing costs.

“Minimizing costs, improving service quality and adding new functionality are the major drivers behind Orange Business Service’s transformation initiative,” saidPierre Barnabé,Vice President, FT/Orange Global Account for Alcatel-Lucent. “The high performance, unmatched Ethernet density and reliability of the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR have been critical factors for Orange Business Services’ decision for this network transformation.”

Orange Business Services joins a list of more than 260 service providers in more than 100 countries that have selected the Alcatel-Lucent IP/MPLS portfolio. This result reflects Alcatel-Lucent’s growing customer base and market adoption of its expanding IP/MPLS portfolio, which has set the industry standard for scalability, quality of service, and high availability.

About Orange

Orange is the key brand of France Telecom, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. With 123 million customers, the Orange brand now covers Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the Group operates. At the end of 2008, France Telecom had consolidated sales of 53.5 billion euros (12.7 billion euros for the first quarter of 2009) and at April 29, 2009, the Group had a customer base of almost 184 million customers in 30 countries. These include 123 million mobile customers worldwide and 13 million broadband Internet (ADSL) customers in Europe. Orange is the number three mobile operator and the number one provider of broadband Internet services in Europe and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.

Scalable solution pushes location-relevant brand messaging and advertisements to customers when and where they want them

Alcatel-Lucent and 1020 Placecast, the leading cross-platform location-based advertising solution provider, has announced that they will jointly provide mobile service providers and brands with a unique, location-based service – hosted by Alcatel-Lucent – that delivers highly relevant messaging and advertising to mobile consumers who opt into the service.

Together, 1020 Placecast and Alcatel-Lucent are offering an end-to-end service that enables service providers to support brands in reaching their target audiences wherever they are in innovative new ways. As part of this service, 1020 Placecast leverages its unique ad engine to weave location information into highly relevant messages — enabling brands and advertising agencies with scalable, proximity marketing campaigns that will be pushed to consumers’ mobile devices in SMS and MMS formats. Alcatel-Lucent, leveraging its Geographic Messaging Services Platform (GMSP) as a hosted service, tracks opt-in subscribers’ locations on behalf of the service provider and pushes mobile content to the subscriber when and where is appropriate – based on the advertising campaign developed and managed by the 1020 Placecast platform.

The network service can support millions of subscribers –- far more than any competing product on the market today — making proximity marketing campaigns for service providers and marketers a reality. It creates an environment where service providers and advertisers can partner in developing and delivering a new generation of revenue-generating mobile advertising services to customers — a market that is expected to reach nearly $5 billion in U.S. service provider revenue by 2011 according to the report “Mobile Advertising: The Service Provider Revenue Opportunity” published by Heavy Reading Research.

Thanks to this joint offering, mobile service providers can, for example, offer consumers an opt-in service where they will receive a mobile message offering a discount at a consumer’s favorite retailer around the corner on their way to work. The message could include the store address, phone number, proximity to the customer, and other brand and carrier developed content. For subscribers, receiving messages and advertising from brands subscribers care about – at the time and place they are most interested in getting them – enhances the mobile experience. By maximizing advertising effectiveness in reaching brands’ target audiences, it generates increased advertising spend with service providers.

“One of the key benefits of mobile marketing is the precise location targeting inherent in mobile devices and communication networks,” says Michael Boland, program director, mobile local media, for The Kelsey Group, a leading provider of local advertising research, analysis, data and competitive metrics. “Pulling together Alcatel-Lucent’s location service with Placecast’s location-based ad serving engine should create a greater ability to deliver more relevant ads that perform better.”

Adds Gani Nayak, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Rich Communication business, “This offering enables carriers, and the brands they support, to create a highly-relevant and personalized experience for mobile users while also delivering immediate return on investment. It combines Alcatel-Lucent’s best-in-class geo-fencing technology — which supports millions of virtual fences — with Placecast’s leading location-based ad platform to launch large-scale, proximity-based mobile marketing campaigns.”

The turnkey service, available in North American, seamlessly delivers messages and advertisements to any mobile device and screen without a capital investment by service providers. Subscribers simply sign-up for the service and select the kinds of messages and offers they want to receive. Their privacy is protected because their exact location is never revealed — only the fact that they have entered a designated geographical area.

“Alcatel-Lucent’s technology allows us to trigger the delivery of a tailored marketing message to a subscriber who has opted into the service when they enter a specific zone,” said Alistair Goodman, CEO of 1020 Placecast. “This enables a direct connection from mobile to the physical world. We’re excited to partner with such an established solutions provider and offer carriers the best targeting and delivery in location-based mobile advertising and marketing.”

Previously, Ben Verwaayen was appointed to the Board of Directors of BT on January 14, 2002 and became Chief Executive on February 1, 2002. He left BT Group on June 1, 2008 as Chairman of the Board’s Operating Committee.

Before joining BT Group, he was at Lucent Technologies starting September 1997, holding various positions. He left Lucent as Vice Chairman of the Management Board. Other positions that Ben Verwaayen held at Lucent were Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Vice-President, International.

Prior to joining Lucent, Ben Verwaayen worked for KPN in the Netherlands for nine years as President and Managing Director of its subsidiary PTT Telecom. From 1975 to 1988, he worked at ITT in Europe.

He was appointed an Independent, Non-Executive Director of UPS in March 2005.

He has been made an Officer of the Orange Order-Nassau and an Honorary Knight of the British Empire (KBE). He has also received the Chevalier de la Légion d ‘Honneur medal.

Ben Verwaayen is a Dutch national and graduated with a Master’s degree in law and international politics from the State University of Utrecht, Holland.

Contact: Ben.Verwaayen@alcatel-lucent.com