IP routing solution to pave way for next-generation wireless services

Tunis, April 14, 2011 – Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that Tunisiana, a mobile operator and a subsidiary of Qatar Telecom, has selected Alcatel-Lucent to transform its mobile network to IP as Tunisiana prepares to evolve to 3G and Long Term Evolution (LTE). Based on its High Leverage Network^TM (HLN) architecture, Alcatel-Lucent’s IP solution gives Tunisiana the infrastructure necessary to meet the demands of its customers for increasingly sophisticated and high bandwidth mobile services. This includes offering a genuine mobile broadband experience with video, multimedia and data services as well as mobile banking applications. In addition to driving new revenues, Tunisiana will garner significant benefits of an all IP transformation with increased reliability, scalability and speed all while reducing operational cost and complexity.

Tunisia has one of the most developed telecommunications infrastructures in the North African region, with some of Africa’s highest market penetration rates. The pace of mobile phone penetration exploded over the last decade, which at the end of 2009, exceeded 93 percent (source: Africa and Middle East telecommunications news and market research service). Now, as users migrate to smart phones, the need for next generation infrastructures to support the massive increase in bandwidth and demand for advanced services, will become critical.

“We will benefit from Alcatel-Lucent‘s worldwide experience in network transformation and state of the art IP networking technologies to smoothly and rapidly migrate to an all-IP infrastructure,” said Hatem Mestiri Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Tunisiana. “Alcatel-Lucent’s solutions and services give us the business and technology tools we need to compete and to offer subscribers a full scope of converged services while improving the end-user’s experience as we evolve our business to 3G and LTE.”

“By launching an IP-based network, Tunisiana can deploy next generation mobile technologies, such as 3G and LTE, and respond to its customers’ demands for advanced services,” said Adolfo Hernandez, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities in Europe, Middle East and Africa. “This new deal reinforces Alcatel-Lucent’s commitment as a trusted partner of leading operators around the world and proves once again the relevance of our High Leverage Network architecture.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will deploy its industry-leading IP/MPLS solution, based on its 7750 Service Router (SR) along with the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM). Alcatel-Lucent will also provide Tunisiana with a set of comprehensive professional services including project management, network design, installation and commissioning, software integration and operations.

The Alcatel-Lucent Service Router portfolio is now deployed at 26 of the top 30 carriers worldwide and more than 400 service provider networks in over 110 countries have been deployed since 2004.

The Alcatel-Lucent High Leverage Network™ (HLN) architecture addresses the dual challenges of simultaneously scaling and managing network capacity to meet increasing bandwidth demand while delivering differentiated, revenue generating services. It achieves this by delivering scalable bandwidth at the lowest cost per bit and by embedding intelligence in the network to enable dynamic service creation and delivery. Supporting the Alcatel-Lucent Application Enablement vision, the HLN architecture collapses multiple complex costly overlay networks into a simpler, fully optimized network that leverages technical innovations, improves operational efficiency and embraces existing environments. For more information, visit http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/hln

About Tunisiana

Tunisiana is a private telecommunications company in Tunisia. Set up with a capital of 359.172 million Tunisian dinars, it was founded on 11 May 2002. It was originally owned by Orascom Telecom before selling their shares in January 2011. Following this cession, “National Mobile Telecommunications Compagny KSC “(Wataniya), a subsidiary owned at 52.5% by Qtel, raised his shares from 50 to 75% in the capital of Tunisiana. At the end of 2010, Tunisiana had more than 5.7 million subscribers and a  52.5% market share despite the entrance of a new private operator.

For more information, visit Tunisiana on:http://www.tunisiana.com