Alcatel and Telcordia Forge Alliance to Drive Innovation in Global OSS Market.

GENEVA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--October 12, 1999--

Alcatel at Telecom 99 - Hall 4, stand n(degree) 210

In an aggressive move to gain a leadership position in the high-growth, multi-vendor global Operation Support Systems (OSS) market, Alcatel and Telcordia Technologies, Inc. (formerly Bellcore) have entered into a strategic alliance to offer complete, integrated, multi-domain solutions to traditional and emerging carriers worldwide.

The alliance builds on the complementary strengths of the two companies by combining the global presence of Alcatel with the OSS expertise of Telcordia Technologies to drive innovation in a highly competitive global carrier environment.

Alcatel has a strong global presence and has created significant business in integrated operational support systems for sophisticated multi-domain, heterogeneous telecommunications networks. A key element of Alcatel's strategy is to develop its presence in a market that is showing explosive growth for service-oriented networks by becoming a leading full service supplier of OSS and value added service solutions worldwide.

Telcordia Technologies is the world's largest provider of OSS, network software, consulting and engineering services to the telecommunications industry. Telcordia is focused on applying advanced technology to create the robust, "industrial-strength" communications networks of the future. Telcordia Technologies is CMM Level 5 certified and offers high technology software solutions to meet a wide range of communications needs.

Welcoming the agreement, Krish Prabhu, COO of Alcatel Telecom, commented: " We have analysed the dynamics of the OSS market for the next century. The explosion of services offered by the telcos, the diversity of technologies, plus the multiplicity of competing operators, will fuel an enormous need for modern, fully-automated yet extremely flexible operation support systems. Both companies have reached the conclusion that they need the best partners to face this challenge and be among the dominant players."

Telcordia President, Sanjiv Ahuja, added: "To compete in the global marketplace, service and network providers are focused on retaining their current customers and gaining market share. Based on the growing customer interest in complete OSS solutions, the Alcatel/Telcordia alliance will play a significant role in the growing global telecommunications market by providing solutions that fully support customers' efforts to be successful."

Customers will benefit from a comprehensive and formidable offer satisfying their complete needs for service assurance, service provisioning and performance management for all types of networks: voice and data, access and transmission, traditional switching, new convergent IP and ATM networks. Telcordia's world-leading technology when combined with Alcatel's 6000 software professionals in this area, its integration skills and its world-wide presence puts the alliance in pole position to provide the best service offering to its customers. The alliance will include a joint strategy for market development and possible joint product developments.

Operators, both incumbents and new players, will benefit from improved operational efficiency through enhanced automation and integration of their back-office carrier activities, thereby reducing costs. This is at a time when they are under increasing pressure from competitors and regulators to improve services and modernise their networks, including automating their provisioning and activation processes to keep pace with customer growth. They will find that new carrier products and services can be deployed without the extensive reworking of the OSS resources and databases that is required today. The result will be greater competitiveness through improved customer care and the ability to react faster and more flexibly to market demand.

About Alcatel

Alcatel builds next generation networks, delivering integrated end-to-end voice and data communications solutions to established and new carriers, as well as enterprises and consumers worldwide. With 120,000 employees and sales of EURO 21.3 billion ($25 billion), Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries.

About Telcordia Technologies

Telcordia Technologies Inc. (formerly Bellcore), an SAIC company, is the world's largest provider of operations support systems, network software and consulting and engineering services to the telecommunications industry. As the leader in the development of next generation network architectures, the Telcordia software organization has earned CMM Level Five from the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, the highest software quality recognition available. Telcordia employs more than 6,000 professionals, and has revenues of more than US$1.2 billion. Telcordia (www.telcordia.com) is headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey, USA with offices throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Oceania and Asia.