Paris, July 19, 2004 – Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) announced today that it has finalized an agreement to buy MNC, the leading mobile application service provider (mobile ASP) in Switzerland. Alcatel’s turnkey approach, powered by MNC, will allow operators to build rich multimedia service offerings (such as content delivery through MMS, SMS, java downloads and mobile video-based services) and to open their networks to hundreds of external content providers, enterprises and communities, thus creating a true ‘mobile kiosk’ placing the end-user at the center of the mobile experience.
This acquisition will allow Alcatel to further address the growing needs of mobile services providers (MSPs) for externally managed solutions including mobile applications, content aggregation and hosting.
This service is provided by Alcatel as a hosted solution. Alcatel owns, maintains and operates the technical solution on behalf of the mobile service provider, while guaranteeing it retains full control and ownership of its commercial strategy and subscriber base. Alcatel’s solution is also extremely attractive for new operators willing to optimize their costs through shared network resources.
“MNC has always been at the forefront of innovation for the benefit of mobile service providers, mobile content providers, and end-users”, declared Edouard Lambelet, chief executive officer of MNC. "For MNC, joining Alcatel represents a fantastic opportunity to leverage Alcatel’s impressive global reach in order to successfully replicate our solutions and our win-win business model around the world.”
“By making the cooperation with mobile operators easier for hundreds of external content providers around the world, Alcatel is bringing to the mobile industry a solution that enables all key market players to combine efforts and offer end-users a wealth of attractive new multimedia services, while sharing the associated revenues in a profitable manner,” added Marc Rouanne, chief operating officer of Alcatel’s mobile communications activities. “We are very happy to have the MNC team join our group. We are convinced this will help us deliver user-centric broadband services.”
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About MNC
MNC is a mobile application and service provider proposing turnkey solutions enabling telecom operators, media companies, Internet portals and service providers to rollout mobile services. MNC is a leader in innovation and has been amongst the first companies in Europe to launch mobile services via SMS already in 1998. MNC's solutions currently enable the services of hundreds of mobile service customers and power up to thousands of different mobile services. MNC’s customers include operators such as Swisscom, Sunrise, television companies like TSR, radios like NRJ, large brands like Philip Morris and the majority of the Swiss football and hockey clubs. For more information about MNC: www.mnc.ch
About Alcatel
Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or to their employees. Alcatel leverages its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services to bring value to its customers in the framework of a broadband world. With sales of EURO 12.5 billion in 2003, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com
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