Paris, July 2, 2002 - Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA), the world leader in optical networking and Deutsche Telekom, Germany's largest telecommunications company, have signed a contract to implement Alcatel's 1674 Lambda Gate, in their national backbone infrastructure by the end of 2002.
A perfect fit for Deutsche Telekom's network architecture, the Alcatel 1674 Lambda Gate will provide powerful design features to support the service provider's present and future bandwidth requirements generated by broadband traffic. Its unique flexibility and highly scalable architecture allow for a cost-efficient in-service transition, from a relatively small configuration to a multi-terabit solution.
"As the nature of telecommunications is continuously changing, Alcatel has developed a broad range of products to deliver feature-rich solutions securing a critical competitive edge for optical network providers", stated Jean-Marie Vansteenkiste, President of Alcatel's terrestrial networks activities.
The Alcatel 1674 Lambda Gate is the only system on the market today that is capable of managing over 2,000 STM-1 equivalents in a single node and the only system to serve as a gateway between the SDH and Optical layers. In tandem with Alcatel's industry leading, end-to-end network management system (NMS), its deployment helps operators reduce their network total cost of ownership.
About Alcatel 1674 Lambda Gate
Addressing core transmission networks, the Alcatel 1674 Lambda Gate is an advanced optical multi-service cross-connect which bridges considerable distances and concentrates unique capacities in one single network element. The system has been developed as a high-speed platform able to support massive multimedia information flows at transmission rates up to 10Gbit/s today and 40Gbit/s in future. Thanks to its flexible architecture, the Alcatel 1674 Lambda Gate can evolve in a scalable way according to the operators' bandwidth requirements. Alcatel's 1674 Lambda Gate is the first system to fully support Optical Transport Hierarchy (OTH), thus providing a standardized multi-vendor and future-proof platform for optical core networks. This capability enables network operators to offer consistent service level agreements to their customers, along all types of services, e.g. SDH/Sonet and Gigabit Ethernet. At the edge of the photonic core network, Alcatel's 1674 Lambda Gate can provide grooming functionality to optimize the utilization of large optical pipes. These distinctive features allow carriers to optimize the potential of their network capacity, while reducing network operational costs.
About Alcatel
According to leading telecom market research firm RHK, Alcatel was the 2001 world leader in global optical transport - encompassing terrestrial and submarine applications - with 17% market share, in terrestrial optical transport with 14.2% market share and in submarine optical transport with 41% market share, an unprecedented achievement in the telecom industry. Alcatel's optics business comprises optical components, optical fibers, SDH/SONET and DWDM systems, cross-connects, microwave radio links, network intelligence, and services for both terrestrial and submarine applications.
Alcatel designs, develops and builds innovative and competitive communications networks, enabling carriers, service providers and enterprises to deliver any type of content, such as voice, data and multimedia, to any type of consumer, anywhere in the world. Relying on its leading and comprehensive products and solutions portfolio, stretching from end-to-end optical infrastructures, fixed and mobile networks to broadband access, Alcatel's customers can focus on optimizing their service offerings and revenue streams. With sales of Euro 25 billion in 2001 and 99,000 employees, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries.
About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is Europe's largest communications company and one of the largest communications carriers worldwide based on 2001 revenues of 48.3 billion Euro. The company is active in four key growth segments of the global telecommunications market: mobile communications, network access services, consumer Internet services and integrated IT and telecommunications solutions. Through T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom's mobile telephony subsidiary, and through other subsidiaries and investments, Deutsche Telekom today serves approximately 67 million mobile telephony customers worldwide. In 2001, Deutsche Telekom completed the acquisition of U.S. mobile telephony companies VoiceStream Wireless and Powertel Inc., forming the first transatlantic wireless communications operator utilizing the GSM digital wireless technology standard. Deutsche Telekom offers its customers a complete range of fixed-line voice telephony products and services through almost 57 million access lines. The company is a leading provider of high-speed digital access lines, with about 2.2 million new asymmetric digital subscriber line (T-DSL) services currently sold and about 20.4 million channels using the information transfer standard ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) as of year end 2001. T-Online is one of the leading consumer Internet service providers worldwide, with approximately 10.7 million subscribers. T-Systems is Europe's second-largest provider of comprehensive IT and telecommunications solutions and services to business customers in more than 20 countries.
For more information about Deutsche Telekom, visit www.telekom.de/international.