Alcatel Extends VimpelCom

PARIS -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) today announced the successful completion of the first phase of a project with VimpelCom (NYSE: VIP), a leading international provider of telecommunications services, operating under the "Beeline" brand in Russia and Kazakhstan, for the deployment of its mobile Next Generation Network (NGN) solution in Russia.

With this network in place, VimpelCom will be able to reduce the operating costs of its mobile GSM/GPRS core network while optimizing its costs for 3G/UMTS introduction, thus ensuring long-term investment protection in preparing for the introduction of IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS). In the framework of the first phase of the project, VimpelCom launched the commercial operation of a segment of its NGN network in the Ural region.

Under the term of the contract signed in Q2 2005, Alcatel provided VimpelCom with its Alcatel Spatial Atrium innovative, standard-based distributed mobile switching solution. The cornerstone of this solution is the Alcatel 5020 Spatial Atrium Softswitch, a multi-standard and field-proven mobile call server controlling distributed media gateways and managing call/session control for voice and data services.

Sergey Avdeev, VimpelCom's executive vice-president of business development in the CIS, and chief technical officer, commented: "Mobile NGN had become a reality in Russia that lets mobile operators significantly reduce operational costs and introduce new fast-to-market services."

"This first Mobile NGN deployment in Russia is one more proof of services and costs benefits offered by Alcatel's mobile NGN solution to operators in fast growing countries, already confirmed by our achievements with TA Orange in Thailand and Zhejiang Mobile in China," said Marc Rouanne, chief operating officer of Alcatel's mobile communications activities. "This project is a perfect example of added value that our Mobile NGN solution can bring to the fast developing mobile operators in Russia and CIS".

In a separate release:

PARIS -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) today announced that it has been awarded a contract by VimpelCom (NYSE: VIP), a leading international provider of telecommunications services, operating under the "Beeline" brand in Russia and Kazakhstan, to deploy Alcatel's AdvancedTCA™-compliant SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node) in its network in the city of Moscow. The project is scheduled for completion and commercial operation in Q1, 2006.

Alcatel's solution enables VimpelCom to introduce new fast-to-market telecommunications applications by leveraging the rapid pace of innovation within the IT industry more quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, this solution allows the operator to further reduce its operating expenses based on a common platform architecture with flexible and modular scaling of network capacity, as well as to ensure the long-term protection of its investments.

AdvancedTCA is an open industry standard for carrier-grade blade-based servers, targeting the requirements for next-generation telecommunications network equipment. The series of specifications is designed to provide higher in/out capacity and computing performance, improved reliability and flexibility, reduced equipment footprint and power consumption, as well as greater choice and interoperability of components at multiple levels of the solution 'stack'.

Alcatel's AdvancedTCA-compliant SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node) is a service-critical mobile core network element which provides the continuity of data communication throughout the different cells of the mobile network. This constitutes one of the world's first applications of AdvancedTCA-based network equipment.

Sergey Avdeev, VimpelCom's executive vice-president of business development in the CIS, chief technical officer, commented: "We believe that the adoption of the AdvancedTCA technology powered by Alcatel will enable VimpelCom to accelerate the introduction of new services while lowering costs, as well as to reinforce the protection of our long-term investments while extending the functionality of our networks ".

"We are delighted to further expand our successful cooperation with VimpelCom in the direction of AdvancedTCA technologies. Implementation of this project will increase VimpelCom's performance and flexibility while providing them with significant CAPEX and OPEX saving opportunities," said Marc Rouanne, chief operating officer of Alcatel's mobile communications activities. "Through this achievement, Alcatel is clearly delivering upon the promises of AdvancedTCA by putting telecom network IT transformation into operation."

Alcatel (NYSE: ALA; Paris: CGEP:PA)