Alcatel and Telica Announce OEM Relationship.

Business/Technology Editors

MARLBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 14, 2002

Telica, today announced that is has entered into an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) agreement with Alcatel, a world leader in the communications industry. The five-year contract allows Alcatel to sell, service and support Telica's Plexus 9000 product for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) deployments. The commitment gives Alcatel a non-exclusive agreement to incorporate and integrate the Telica product within Alcatel's world-class Next Generation Networks (NGN) solutions portfolio sold in the U.S. market. The result is a highly reliable, carrier-grade VoIP solution available today to carriers and service providers.

"Telica is excited to work with the worldwide leader in telecommunications equipment," said John St. Amand, president and CEO of Telica. "Telica's Plexus 9000 has been successful in the market with its customer deployments, high density, proven reliability, and flexibility, and this partnership will further expand the opportunities for the Plexus 9000 thanks to Alcatel's global presence and dominant position in the carrier infrastructure market."

Alcatel's NGN product suite, including softswitches and media gateways, is based on open standards to meet the needs of interexchange carriers, incumbent local exchange carriers, competitive local exchange carriers, and wireless networks.

Alcatel has adopted open standards to ensure interworking with different vendors' products. For softswitches and media gateways, supported standards include MGCP, H.323, H.248/Megaco, SIP/SIP-T, BICC, and SS7.

"Telica's voice over IP media gateway complements Alcatel's carrier-grade NGN offerings," said Henry Wasik, group vice president, Voice Networks Division and Networks Application Division, Alcatel USA. "The Telica product will enable Alcatel to address immediate opportunities for voice over IP deployments in the U.S."

Alcatel and Telica have worked together on testing the product and interoperability of Alcatel's next generation softswitch platforms and Telica's Plexus 9000 as a VoIP media gateway. The combination of extensive testing and the completion of several arduous industry certification processes were all factors in the Alcatel decision.

About Alcatel

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. For more information, www.alcatel.com

About Telica

Telica provides innovative softswitch-based voice and data infrastructure products for today's evolving telecommunications networks. The company's Plexus 9000 is an intelligent switching platform that offers economic and competitive advantages to service providers. This carrier-grade system encompasses both switching equipment and software to enable voice and data services to be delivered over the public switched telephone network as well as asynchronous transfer mode and IP networks - all in a distributed softswitch model or an integrated open solution that reduces network complexity and cost. Breakthrough levels of density, performance, reliability and scalabilty assure the highest quality of service while easily accommodating subscriber growth. Telica, founded in 1998, is headquartered in Marlboro, Mass., with offices throughout the United States and Canada. For more information, www.telica.com

Note: Telica, the Telica logo and Plexus are trademarks of Telica, Inc. Other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.