Lucent Inaugurates Switching Manufacturing Plant in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Business Editors

CAMPINAS, Brazil--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2000

-- The facility, formerly Batik Equipamentos, was acquired by Lucent

in 1999 and expanded to manufacture 5ESS and BZ5000 switches,

7R/E(TM) Packet Solutions and the Anymedia Access(R) System

Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU) today announced the inauguration of its third manufacturing facility in Brazil. Formerly Batik Equipamentos, a Brazilian switch manufacturer acquired by Lucent in 1999, the facility in Belo Horizonte was expanded and modernized to manufacture 5ESS switches,7 R/E Packet Solutions, BZ5000 switches and the Anymedia Access system for the Brazilian market.

With an investment of US$5 million, the facility will operate according to Lucent's ISO 9000 global manufacturing standards. These investments bring Lucent's total investments in Brazil, a strategic market for the corporation, to US$180 million over three years.

In addition to Lucent's flagship 5ESS switch, the Belo Horizonte facility will also focus its production on the BZ5000, a scalable, convergence switch that is ideal for for rural areas throughout the world. The plant also will manufacture Lucent's next generation 7R/E solutions and the Anymedia(R) Access system, which is an integrated narrowband and broadband access platform. The plant has a capacity to produce up to a total of 1.9 million ports per year.

"The investments we have made over the past year demonstrate the long-term commitment Lucent has to Brazil and the entire Latin American region," said Frank D'Amelio, president of Lucent's Switching Solutions Group." We look forward to becoming the premier telecommunications supplier in the region in the years to come."

Located in the industrial district of Jatoba, in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais, the 21,000 square-meter manufacturing facility employs about 400 employees - 220 in manufacturing and the rest focused in research and development, engineering and customer technical support.

"In a very short time-frame, Lucent implemented a training program to prepare the entire staff to manufacture the central switches and we are now prepared to meet the demand for systems that enable voice and data convergence," said Ricardo Zimmer Prados, managing director of the Belo Horizonte facility. "Convergence is a reality in the Brazilian market and Lucent is ready to supply the equipment to make it possible."

In addition to the Belo Horizonte plant, Lucent is in the process of furbishing a fourth facility to manufacture optical fiber cable in Campinas, next door to its wireless manufacturing facility. According to Renato Furtado, president of Lucent Technologies do Brasil, "Brazil brings together two important components to attract investments in manufacturing - a large market and a knowledgeable base of technical engineers. The Belo Horizonte facility brings a local presence and facilitates distribution in the north and northeast regions of this large country."

The Belo Horizonte facility is among Lucent's 14 switching manufacturing plants around the world...

The 5ESS Switch, a key element of Lucent's 7R/E(TM) Packet Solutions, is the most widely deployed switch in the world, providing service for 128 million telephone lines in 66 countries around the globe and serving as the reliable foundation for next-generation networks based on packet technology.

Last week, Lucent announced that the 5ESS was once again proven to be the the leader in public network reliability, according to analysis of the latest Federal data on service quality, with roughly 20 times better results than the other major network suppliers.

The most recent ARMIS (Automatic Reporting Management and Information System) Report measures 1999 network outage data, supplied by the nation's service providers as required by the U.S. FCC (Federal Communications Commission). Results issued last month showed Lucent's 5ESS Switch had only 10 seconds of attributable downtime per switch, per year, in comparison to competitors' switches that had attributable downtime between three and four minutes each.

Thirty seconds of downtime equates to 99.9999 percent of uptime, which is known in the industry as six 9s of availability. Lucent's switch set a new record by becoming the only switch in the history of the ARMIS Report that has achieved six 9s availability per switch, per year for five straight years

"The FCC ARMIS Report is the most authoritative source for comparing switching equipment suppliers in the world," said Art Menko, president of BPI Telcodata, a global telecommunications analyst firm. "It has a large statistical sample size, uses consistent criteria for outage reporting, is public and verifiable, and contains major switches deployed in the U.S.

He added: "Lucent's switch recorded the best reliability performance of any switch ever, improved by over 22 percent from the previous year, and Lucent is the only switch supplier whose product has been improving consistently over the past few years."

BPI Telcodata, located in Ardmore, Penn., is a worldwide telecommunications information and consulting leader, serving the carrier, vendor and investment communities since 1984. For more information, visit http://www.telcodata.net.

Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, designs and delivers the systems, software, silicon and services for next-generation communications networks for service providers and enterprises. Backed by the research and development of Bell Labs, Lucent focuses on high-growth areas such as optical and wireless networks; Internet infrastructure; communications software; communications semiconductors and optoelectronics; Web-based enterprise solutions that link private and public networks; and professional network design and consulting services. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit its Web site at http://www.lucent.com.