HERNDON, Va. -- France Telecom (NYSE: FTE), one of the world’s leading telecommunications carriers, announced today that it will provide international IP transit capacity to the MSN network of Internet services. With Gigabit-Ethernet port access, MSN will make use of France Telecom’s extensive worldwide IP network, connectivity and content at multiple points of entry.

Through the agreement, France Telecom will increasingly deliver bandwidth-intense content and applications to customers who use MSN in London (UK), Singapore and Tokyo (Japan). With a single global Autonomous System Number (AS5511), France Telecom’s Open Transit Internet service offers customers access from more than 50 Points of Presence throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe, where the service reaches 80% of web-users within one single AS-hop. Additional value-added services on its 10 Gbps network include Multi-casting, “Blackholing” security features, IPv6 and housing (collocation) solutions at multiple locations.

Brooke Richardson, product manager for MSN, commented: “MSN is constantly looking for opportunities to provide our customers with the most useful online experience, and we are very pleased to team up with France Telecom to enhance customer access needs. This relationship will help us deliver on our goal to offer customers access to the people and information that matter most to them anytime, anyplace.”

Danny Vargas, Vice President of Marketing U.S. and Latin America, France Telecom Networks, Carriers and IT Division, said: “We are thrilled that MSN is joining the growing number of content providers and ISPs linked to our network: each new customer adds value by increasing connectivity to content and end-users. We’ve been actively targeting content providers with a specific offering; for example with asymmetric capacity that optimizes bandwidth consumption by taking into account that the bulk of their traffic flows towards end-users. Our service already ranks in the top tier in Europe and is progressively gaining a reputation for best-in-class quality worldwide.”

As a stable global IP provider, France Telecom operates an extensive 10 Gbps IP network that connects more than 100 countries and 1 billion IP end-users. France Telecom strengthened its IP service offering in May 2003 when it announced that its IP network supported native IPv6 and thus offered ISPs a giant leap forward in terms of quality transit. In response to more demanding U.S. specifications, France Telecom also strengthened SLAs on service quality and network availability covering both backbone and customer ports, particularly on Internet services.

France Telecom SA

Microsoft Corp.